New sugar substitutes in the pipeline.

Sweeter than sugar, naturally derived, and "bake-able"--what more could you ask for in a sugar substitute? Douglas Kinghorn, associate director of the University of Illinois in Chicago College of Pharmacy, is working to bring a family of these sweet natural products to market.

The compounds come from the weedy vine Abrus precatorius, commonly known as the rosary pea, which grows in tropical regions worldwide. In Indonesia, the vine's leaves are used to sweeten a chewed stimulant derived from betel, and a pharmaceutical company there uses them in a treatment for sprue, a tropical ailment that causes diarrhea and impairs absorption of nutrients. Kinghorn hopes the years of apparently safe human exposure these applications represent will help convince U.S. regulators to accept sweeteners derived from the leaves.

Kinghorn and his colleagues collected their own leaves near Miami, where the rosary pea is considered an invasive weed. Over the years, they have found five particularly sweet saponins (plant glucosides that can produce a soapy lather) in the leaves and have made a derivative from one of them that is even tastier. The first five range from 30 to 100 times sweeter than sugar, and the new...