The protein is crucial in developing taste buds in embryos and is a regulator of the renewal of epithelial tissue in adults including skin, hair follicles, intestine and the inside of the mouth. Using mouse models, the researchers discovered that a protein in the Wnt pathway, called ß-catenin, controls the renewal of taste cells by regulating separate stages of taste cell turnover.
Gaillard said that understanding how taste cells renew throughout adult life and how new cells replace old cells as they die is essential in finding potential therapies to improve taste sensitivity in those patients impacted. "Taste dysfunction can.result from an alteration of the renewal capacities of taste buds and is often associated with psychological distress and malnutrition," said the study's lead author Dany Gaillard, PhD, an instructor in cell and developmental biology at CU Anschutz. Food may have no taste, a metallic taste or taste so bad that it's impossible to swallow. The study was published in the most recent edition of the journal PLOS Genetics.Ĭancer patients, including those with colon and head and neck cancer, often experience significant alteration of their sense of taste during treatment with chemotherapy or radiation.
"That in turn will alter a person's sense of taste leading to malnutrition, weight loss and sometimes death." "Many cancer drugs, which circulate throughout the entire body, will target a tumor but in the process affect healthy cells," said the study's senior author Linda Barlow, PhD, professor of cell and developmental biology at CU Anschutz.
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