Prof. Robert Shallenberger and Terry Acree, his then graduate student at Cornell University, published a 1967 paper in Nature that described their AH,B hypothesis of sweet taste.  This hypothesis sought to bring logical order to the great diversity of chemical structures that were known to elicit sweetness and proposed that all sweet tasting compounds contained common structural elements positioned in defined geometrical arrangements, described for a broad range of sweet tasting compounds, including saccharin, amino acids, sugars, chloroform and even inorganic salts.  The paper generated huge interest and stimulated research aimed at extending the theory and using it to design new commercial sweeteners.  Important extensions to the AH,B theory by Kier and Tinti and Nofre retained the central AH,B structural elements as central for sweetness. Researchs seeking to identify new high potency sweeteners drew on these design theories with some notable successes. The AH,B theory and Kier's extension brought rationality to the structure-taste relationships of halogenated derivatives of sucrose, helped to identify alitame as a sweetener and with the developments of Tinti and Nofre, identified neotame as a super-potent sweet structure.  Also the sweet taste inhibitor lactisole was discovered by application of of the AH,B hypothesis.  The AH,B hypothesis with these extensions has undoubtedly  made a critical contribution to the discovery and development of a series of sweeteners and sweetness modifiers that have been commercially successful.  They will be described and commercial developments of these theories will be reviewed.

Commercial consequences of Shallenberger and Acree's AH,B theory of sweet taste

240th National Meeting (2010)

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