A multichannel taste sensor whose transducer is composed of several kinds of lipid/polymer membranes with different characteristics can detect taste in a manner similar to human gustatory sensation. Taste information is transformed into a pattern composed of electric signals of membrane potentials of the receptor part. In the present study, it was shown that the suppression of the bitterness of quinine and a drug substance by sucrose can be quantified using a multichannel taste sensor. The present method can be expected to provide a new automated method to measure the strength of bitterness of drug substance in the place of sensory evaluation.

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A multichannel taste sensor can respond to many kinds of chemical substances simultaneously with high sensitivity. It has a possibility to measure various substances that remain in used food packages. The purpose of the present research is to detect chemical substances which were dissolved to aqueous solution from three materials such as raw materials of PET bottles (poly (ethyleneterephthalate)), used PET bottles and recycled egg packages. We found that there is no metalic ions in these samples and hydrophobic substances were dissolved from used PET bottles and recycled egg packages. Additionally, we used near-infrared spectroscopy to analyze the substances; however, no significant spectrum was not found. This result implies that the multichannel taste sensor can be used to evaluate the quality of recycled food packages.