Bitter Human Taste Bud Epithelial Cell Platforms for Bitter Taste Antagonist Discovery

Principal Investigators for Small BusinessDiscoveryBioMedIncDBMand Monell Chemical Senses Center Project Summary Abstract Bitter taste in foods and medicines presents a barrier to overcoming global public health challengesfood insecuritypoor nutritional healthand poor compliance with medication useparticularly among children and the elderlySugar and saltthe mainstays to address these challengesfurther erode nutritional healthand current alternatives have adverse taste attributes of their ownWe propose to develop a reliablehuman tastecell screening platform to find bitter blockers of commercial interest to the foodflavorand pharmaceutical industrieswith the aim to improve the taste and acceptance of nutritious and sustainable foods and medicinesThis PhaseSTTR proposal has the following goalsato establish immortal human taste bud derived epithelial cell cultures and linesi ehTBEC platformsfrom donors with bitter sensitive genotypes andbto designoptimizeand implement hTBEC based bioassays of bitter taste receptor function and other key end points to produce readout data for high throughput screeningHTSThis proposed research is the initial step toward our ultimate goal of executing a full HTS based campaign to discover and validate bitter taste receptor antagonists from phytochemicalsphytochemical derivativesand botanical extracts and extract fractionsThis commercial academic collaboration between DiscoveryBioMedIncand Monell Chemical Senses Center brings together expertise inaculture of human taste cellsbthe creation of immortalized cell linescHTSandcgenetics and human sensory analysisThe hypothesis is that hTBEC platform based bioassays will provide a more relevant and robust way to identify new bitter antagonistsgiven the imperfect current methods of overexpressing known taste receptors in heterologous cellsThe discovery of bitter taste receptor antagonists that alone or blended will block bitter taste can improve healthy eating by reducing reliance on salt and sugar and can improve compliance by patients taking medicinesThusnew bitter blockers will improve human healthPHSRevre issuedPage Continuation Format PagePrincipal Investigators for Small BusinessDiscoveryBioMedIncDBMand Monell Chemical Senses Center Public Health Relevance Statement Bitter taste in foods and medicines stymies efforts to improve nutritional healthalleviate food insecurity and accounts in part for poor compliance by patientswho fail to take medication as prescribedSugar and saltthe mainstays to address these challengesfurther erode healthand current alternatives to these bitter masking compounds have adverse taste attributes of their ownWe propose to develop a reliablehuman taste cell screening platform to find acceptable bitter blockers of commercial interest to the foodflavorand pharmaceutical industriesto improve the taste and acceptance of nutritious and sustainable foods and medicinesPHSRevre issuedPage Continuation Format Page