Israeli Scientist Wants Your Bitter Medicine to Taste Better

Over the last century scientists have developed hundreds of groundbreaking treatments that can save and improve lives.  Now, researchers from the Hebrew University are working to make these therapies easier to swallow.

Masha Niv, the Times of Israel reports, a researcher at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science, and Nutrition has spent her career diving into the intricacies of bitter flavors in pursuit of better tasting medicine. Her team has created a groundbreaking online database of bitter substances and has unlocked bitterness’s unique role in keeping the lungs clean and healthy and helping the whole body function. The work is published in the journal of Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences.

The Roots of Bitterness
Niv explains that historically people thought bitterness was there to alert people that a certain food was toxic. However, Niv cautions, bitterness isn’t always, or even often, associated with toxicity, explaining that greens like arugula and Brussel sprouts, and healthy substances like dark chocolate and coffee are also bitter.

Instead, NPR reports that bitterness acts more like a yellow flag than a red one, alerting tasters that they need to be a little more cautious but not necessarily avoid the substance altogether.

Niv explains to NPR, “As the common paradigm says, [bitter]has to protect from poisons or, as I try to say, it has to alert us so that we decide whether something is poisonous for us or not. Because, in the world around us, there are plants, and there are insects, and there are lots of natural chemical compounds around us, and we kind of need these receptors to say, OK, it’s something new. Let’s first be a little bit careful about it – a little bit averse to it. So this is the one possible reason.”

26 Bitter Taste Receptors
Accordingly, bitterness is a complex taste. For example, whereas the tongue contains only one type of taste receptor to detect sweetness, there are 25 receptors that pick up bitterness’s intricate flavors.

The Times of Israel reports that one of these bitter taste receptors, called TAS2R14 is extremely sensitive and can match with hundreds of different chemicals found in bitter substances, sending the brain a signal that the item tastes bitter.

Interestingly, TAS2R14 receptors aren’t just limited to the tongue. They are also found in the lungs where they detect bitter-tasting chemicals released by bacteria and signal to the airway muscles to open up in response, improving breathing.

Niv’s team thinks that by studying bitter taste receptors they may be able to find ways to target taste receptors in the airway and treat asthma and COPD. They also hope to improve the taste of bad-tasting medicines.

Muting Bitter Taste
In pursuit of these goals, Niv’s team created BitterDB, an online database detailing more than 2,200 bitter tasting molecules and their matching taste receptors. Human researchers and AI work together to analyze this database, looking for clues as to how to improve health through studying bitter tastes.

Her team’s main goal is to find ways to mute bitter tastes by switching off the receptors in the tongue, making medicine more palatable for people with sensitive taste buds and for children.

Thanks to Niv’s research, the future of medicine could be a lot easier to swallow.  By understanding the roots of bitterness, scientists may transform this astringent taste into a tool for better health.