Gene/Protein
Disease
Symptom
Drug
Enzyme
Compound
Pivot Concepts:
Gene/Protein
Disease
Symptom
Drug
Enzyme
Compound
Target Concepts:
Gene/Protein
Disease
Symptom
Drug
Enzyme
Compound
Query: UMLS:C0235290 (
bitter taste
)
1,408
document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)
Treatment compliance is reduced when pharmaceutical compounds have a
bitter taste
and this is particularly marked for paediatric medications. Identification of
bitter taste
liability during drug discovery utilises the rat in vivo brief access taste aversion (BATA) test which apart from animal use is time consuming with limited throughput. We investigated the suitability of using a simple, non-animal model, the amoeba
Dictyostelium
discoideum to investigate taste-related responses and particularly identification of compounds with a
bitter taste
liability. The effect of taste-related compounds on
Dictyostelium
behaviour following acute exposure (15 minutes) was monitored.
Dictyostelium
did not respond to salty, sour, umami or sweet tasting compounds, however, cells rapidly responded to bitter tastants. Using time-lapse photography and computer-generated quantification to monitor changes in cell membrane movement, we developed an assay to assess the response of
Dictyostelium
to a wide range of structurally diverse known bitter compounds and blinded compounds.
Dictyostelium
showed varying responses to the bitter tastants, with IC50 values providing a rank order of potency. Comparison of
Dictyostelium
IC50 values to those observed in response to a similar range of compounds in the rat in vivo brief access taste aversion test showed a significant (p = 0.0172) positive correlation between the two models, and additionally a similar response to that provided by a human sensory panel assessment test. These experiments demonstrate that
Dictyostelium
may provide a suitable model for early prediction of bitterness for novel tastants and drugs. Interestingly, a response to bitter tastants appears conserved from single-celled amoebae to humans.
...
PMID:Bitter tastant responses in the amoeba Dictyostelium correlate with rat and human taste assays. 2670 4
