[Application of taste sensor to medicines in research, development and market]

Using a taste sensor in the field of medical products has the following four main purposes: (1) Ensuring that investigational product and placebo are indistinguishable; (2) Formulation design; (3) Quality control; (4) Benchmark test. Unlike evaluating a taste of food, roughly predicting a taste of drug without human sensory test and quantitative evaluation using small quantity of drug sample are more important than evaluation of the nuances of homogeneous taste and preference. Here are some examples of using taste sensor for these purposes. (1) We predicted a taste of suspension of phosphatic drug substance in an early phase of development using a taste sensor. As a result, the suspension seemed to have sour and bitter taste. Then we made placebo solution of citric acid similar taste as much like active suspension to ensure indistinguishable taste from each other. (2) A taste of orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) in the mouth is important to drug adherence. The taste of an ODT was then evaluated in chronological order by combining the taste sensor with the new disintegration testing apparatus to design easy-to-take formulation. (3) We evaluated taste variation of a commercial product in batch-to-batch and identified the cause of the variation. (4) We did benchmark test for easy-to-take of commercial ODTs in vitro. There is great variability among these products in the disintegrating profile and the taste.