Source: Monell Chemical Senses Center
Date: April 6, 2011
Summary:
Following years of futile attempts, new research from the Monell Center demonstrates that living human taste cells can be maintained in culture for at least seven months. The findings provide scientists with a valuable tool to learn about the human sense of taste and how it functions in health and disease. This advance ultimately will assist efforts to prevent and treat taste loss or impairment due to infection, radiation, chemotherapy and chemical exposures.
To dispel the long-held belief, the Monell scientists first demonstrated in 2006 that taste cells from rats could successfully be maintained in culture. In the current study, published online in the journal Chemical Senses, they then applied that methodology to a more clinically relevant population -- humans. Taking tiny samples of tongue tissue from human volunteers, the researchers first adapted existing techniques to demonstrate that the human taste cells indeed can regenerate in culture. They went on to show that the new taste cells were functional, maintaining key molecular and physiological properties characteristic of the parent cells. For example, the new cells also were activated by sweet and bitter taste molecules.
