MLANA
Melanoma antigen recognized by T-cells 1
Also known as: MAR1_HUMAN, MART-1, MART1
Cross-references: UniProt · Ensembl · Human Protein Atlas · GeneCards · NCBI Gene
Protein identityUniProt · HPA
- UniProt accession
- Q16655
- Gene
- MLANA
- Ensembl
- ENSG00000120215
- Chromosome
- 9
- Canonical length
- 118 aa
- Protein class
- Predicted membrane proteins
OverviewNCBI Gene
Located in endoplasmic reticulum membrane; melanosome; and trans-Golgi network. [provided by Alliance of Genome Resources, Jul 2025]
Canonical amino-acid sequenceUniProt
118 residues, UniProt reviewed canonical sequence.
>Q16655|MLANA
1 MPREDAHFIY GYPKKGHGHS YTTAEEAAGI GILTVILGVL LLIGCWYCRR RNGYRALMDK
61 SLHVGTQCAL TRRCPQEGFD HRDSKVSLQE KNCEPVVPNA PPAYEKLSAE QSPPPYSPLocalizationUniProt · AlphaFold · HPA
Whether an antibody against MLANA can act on the native protein depends on physical access: surface and secreted proteins are reachable by circulating antibodies, intracellular proteins usually are not.
- Antibody reachability
- Other membrane
- Secreted
- No
- Transmembrane segments
- 1
- Mean surface accessibility (rSASA)
- 0.66
- Highest tissue expression
- 41 nTPM
Expression across tissuesHPA
Tissue
- skin: 41 nTPM
- breast: 1.3 nTPM
- salivary gland: 0.9 nTPM
- bone marrow: 0.6 nTPM
- appendix: 0.4 nTPM
- liver: 0.4 nTPM
Single-cell type
- melanocytes: 2,724 nCPM
- cardiomyocytes: 88 nCPM
- epicardial cells: 82 nCPM
- basal keratinocytes: 32 nCPM
- adipocytes: 31 nCPM
- retinal pigment epithelial cells: 26 nCPM
Immune cell
- basophil: 0.6 nTPM
- neutrophil: 0.3 nTPM
- naive B-cell: 0.2 nTPM
- naive CD8 T-cell: 0.2 nTPM
- NK-cell: 0.2 nTPM
- classical monocyte: 0.1 nTPM
Brain region
- choroid plexus: 17 nTPM
- cerebellum: 8.3 nTPM
- cerebral cortex: 6.1 nTPM
- white matter: 5.9 nTPM
- thalamus: 5.7 nTPM
- pons: 5.5 nTPM
DiseaseUniProt · ClinVar · IEDB · PubMed
Four sources answering four different questions about MLANA.
Disease | ImmuneIEDB
Conditions an epitope on MLANA was assayed in.
- skin melanoma B and T cell
- melanoma T cell
- chronic lymphocytic leukemia T cell
- vitiligo T cell
- alopecia areata T cell
- acral lentiginous melanoma T cell
- acute myeloid leukemia T cell
ReferencesPubMed · IEDB
Publications for MLANA from three distinct lines of evidence, kept separate because they answer different questions: whether antibodies are directed at the protein, whether a B-cell epitope has been mapped on it, and whether a T-cell epitope has. Each is labelled with its source.
Reference: AutoantibodyPubMed
2 publications
- The antibody response against MART-1 differs in patients with melanoma-associated leucoderma and vitiligo.
2014 · Pigment Cell Melanoma Res · RCR 0.9 · 28 citations - [Detection of serum autoantibodies to melanocyte and correlation between melanoma antigen recognized by T-cells and vitiligo in children].
2009 · Nan Fang Yi Ke Da Xue Xue Bao · RCR 0 · 1 citations
Reference: B cellIEDB
3 publications
- Vaccination with Melanoma Helper Peptides Induces Antibody Responses Associated with Improved Overall Survival.
2015 · Clin Cancer Res · RCR 1 · 39 citations - Elimination of melanoma by sortase A-generated TCR-like antibody-drug conjugates (TL-ADCs) targeting intracellular melanoma antigen MART-1.
2018 · Biomaterials · RCR 0.6 · 19 citations - MHC-peptide-specific antibodies reveal inefficient presentation of an HLA-A*0201-restricted, Melan-A-derived peptide after active intracellular processing.
2007 · Eur J Immunol · RCR 0.2 · 14 citations
Reference: T cellIEDB
91 publications
- Personal neoantigen vaccines induce persistent memory T cell responses and epitope spreading in patients with melanoma.
2021 · Nat Med · RCR 21.4 · 429 citations - A comprehensive proteogenomic pipeline for neoantigen discovery to advance personalized cancer immunotherapy.
2025 · Nat Biotechnol · RCR 19.4 · 68 citations - Phenotype, specificity and avidity of antitumour CD8+ T cells in melanoma.
2021 · Nature · RCR 19.4 · 446 citations - Discovery of tumor-reactive T cell receptors by massively parallel library synthesis and screening.
2025 · Nat Biotechnol · RCR 10 · 39 citations - Landscape of helper and regulatory antitumour CD4+ T cells in melanoma.
2022 · Nature · RCR 9.2 · 164 citations
Show 20 more of 91 total
- Targeting of multiple tumor-associated antigens by individual T cell receptors during successful cancer immunotherapy.
2023 · Cell · RCR 9 · 114 citations - Efficient identification of mutated cancer antigens recognized by T cells associated with durable tumor regressions.
2014 · Clin Cancer Res · RCR 7.8 · 325 citations - Anti-PD-L1 and anti-CD73 combination therapy promotes T cell response to EGFR-mutated NSCLC.
2022 · JCI Insight · RCR 6.7 · 103 citations - Directed evolution of human T-cell receptors with picomolar affinities by phage display.
2005 · Nat Biotechnol · RCR 6.5 · 380 citations - Clonal Deletion Prunes but Does Not Eliminate Self-Specific αβ CD8(+) T Lymphocytes.
2015 · Immunity · RCR 6.4 · 266 citations - Regeneration of human tumor antigen-specific T cells from iPSCs derived from mature CD8(+) T cells.
2013 · Cell Stem Cell · RCR 5.7 · 246 citations - Single and dual amino acid substitutions in TCR CDRs can enhance antigen-specific T cell functions.
2008 · J Immunol · RCR 5.3 · 308 citations - Design and use of conditional MHC class I ligands.
2006 · Nat Med · RCR 4.9 · 292 citations - Gene transfer of tumor-reactive TCR confers both high avidity and tumor reactivity to nonreactive peripheral blood mononuclear cells and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes.
2006 · J Immunol · RCR 4.5 · 273 citations - Detection of self-reactive CD8⁺ T cells with an anergic phenotype in healthy individuals.
2014 · Science · RCR 4 · 170 citations - Neoantigen-specific CD8 T cells with high structural avidity preferentially reside in and eliminate tumors.
2023 · Nat Commun · RCR 3.9 · 55 citations - T cell antigen discovery via signaling and antigen-presenting bifunctional receptors.
2019 · Nat Methods · RCR 3.8 · 125 citations - T cell antigen discovery via trogocytosis.
2019 · Nat Methods · RCR 3.8 · 131 citations - Direct isolation, phenotyping and cloning of low-frequency antigen-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes from peripheral blood.
1998 · Curr Biol · RCR 3.3 · 174 citations - Melanocyte-associated T cell epitopes can function as autoantigens for transfer of alopecia areata to human scalp explants on Prkdc(scid) mice.
2001 · J Invest Dermatol · RCR 2.8 · 121 citations - Identification of patient-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell neoantigens through HLA-unbiased genetic screens.
2023 · Nat Biotechnol · RCR 2.6 · 36 citations - PLGA nanoparticle-mediated delivery of tumor antigenic peptides elicits effective immune responses.
2012 · Int J Nanomedicine · RCR 2.5 · 82 citations - TCRs used in cancer gene therapy cross-react with MART-1/Melan-A tumor antigens via distinct mechanisms.
2011 · J Immunol · RCR 2.4 · 127 citations - Case Report of a Fatal Serious Adverse Event Upon Administration of T Cells Transduced With a MART-1-specific T-cell Receptor.
2015 · Mol Ther · RCR 2.4 · 93 citations - Vaccination with LAG-3Ig (IMP321) and Peptides Induces Specific CD4 and CD8 T-Cell Responses in Metastatic Melanoma Patients--Report of a Phase I/IIa Clinical Trial.
2016 · Clin Cancer Res · RCR 2.3 · 81 citations
Sources: PubMed — antigen-level antibody evidence from a custom retrieval. Records matching a controlled set of autoantibody terms (the MeSH descriptors Autoantibodies and Autoantigens, with title and abstract term variants) were obtained through NCBI E-utilities, and their titles and abstracts parsed for constructions that direct an antibody at a named protein rather than for co-occurrence. Captured names were resolved against UniProt nomenclature and each antigen adjudicated individually against the source text. IEDB — curated epitope assays from the Immune Epitope Database (Vita et al., Nucleic Acids Research 2019). Bibliographic records from PubMed and MeSH, U.S. National Library of Medicine; citation metrics from NIH iCite (Hutchins et al., PLoS Biology 2016). Titles link to PubMed; abstracts are not reproduced here. The NLM does not endorse this analysis.
Genetic constraint and essentialitygnomAD · DepMap
Does the body need this protein intact? Low LOEUF or a strong DepMap dependency means loss or blockade of the protein is likely to be felt.
- gnomAD LOEUF (loss-of-function intolerance)
- 1.95
- gnomAD pLI
- 0
- gnomAD missense Z
- -0.12
- DepMap mean gene effect
- 0.09
- DepMap dependency class
- selective
Cancer expressionTCGA
Across TCGA tumor cohorts, this protein is over-expressed in roughly 2% of surveyed tumor types (aggregate summary; per-cohort expression, alteration, and survival load in the interactive view).
OntologyGO
Cellular components
Protein domainsUniProt · Pfam · InterPro
- Protein melan-A
- Protein melan-A
KeywordsUniProt
InteractionsUniProt · HPA
Protein binding partners of MLANA in the human serome: UniProt-annotated complex subunits plus reported interactors. Each links to its own Seroatlas record.
Antibody and autoantibody relevanceSeroatlas analysis
Seroatlas reads MLANA as an antibody target. Whether an autoantibody or antibody against MLANA could matter depends on whether native MLANA is physically reachable, whether the body needs it intact, and whether it acts in a disease-relevant tissue.
MLANA is annotated as predominantly intracellular. Intracellular proteins are common autoantibody markers, becoming visible to the immune system after cell injury or altered processing, but are usually markers of disease rather than direct drivers.
Annotation status
The present source text does not explicitly label MLANA as an autoantigen. Seroatlas presents hypothesis context only and does not manufacture a known-serology claim.
Loading the interactive Seroatlas protein explorer...