ABSTRACT
The discovery of the taste of L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester—aspartame—was accidental, as has been true for the discovery of previous novel chemical compounds having a sweet taste. In the early 1960s one of the projects in the Searle research laboratories was to find an inhibitor of the gastrointestinal secretory hormone gastrin as a possible treatment for ulcers. The sweetness of aspartame could not have been predicted from the tastes of the constituent amino acids; aspartic acid is tasteless to slightly sour, whereas phenylalanine is bitter. Since 1965 many analogs of aspartame have been synthesized in laboratories all over the world. Compounds in which the phenylalanine methyl ester in aspartame was replaced by unsymmetrical diesters of aminomalonic acid were unusually sweet. L-aspartic acid, while not at all sweet itself, when derivatized in a special waygives products which often have a sweet taste, sometimes even with astonishing potencies.
