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Discovery and Development of Natural Products for Cancer Interception and Prevention (DDNP-CIP)

There are ~500,000 semi-purified products of plants, marine life, and microbes in the NCI Natural Product Collection

The Discovery and Development of Natural Products for Cancer Interception and Prevention Program (DDNP-CIP) supports the discovery and development of new natural products that are safe, non-toxic, and useful for cancer interception and prevention. Given the wide range of chemical diversity found in natural products around the world, they present an opportunity to discover biologically active compounds with unique structures and mechanisms of action. However, only a small percentage of them have been screened and evaluated for their potential in cancer prevention. NCI has one of the most diverse libraries of semi-purified natural product fractions in the world that are readily available to the research community for further testing. DDNP-CIP investigators are using new techniques, including high-throughput screening strategies, to screen natural products for activity in pathways to intercept and prevent cancer.

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About DDNP-CIP

The Discovery and Development of Natural Products for Cancer Interception and Prevention (DDNP-CIP) Program’s overall research objectives are to:

  • Identify and select clinically relevant cancer interception and prevention pathways and targets in natural products;
  • Develop robust high-throughput screening strategies and specific cell-based and/or cell-free assays to screen non-toxic natural agents;
  • Screen, purify, and identify the structure of active natural compounds;
  • Develop models that could be used to guide the selection of preventive agents active in assays.

The flow chart below shows the steps for discovery and development of natural products for cancer prevention The National Cancer Institute supports the process across divisions and the NCI Program for Natural Product Discovery (NPNPD). In addition, the National Institutes of Health National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) supports this process.

Flow chart of the DDNP-CIP
The research may use a design along the continuum (such as clinically relevant cancer interception target selection and verification in both preclinical in vivo and clinical samples, assay development or validation, prototype high-throughput screening (HTS), pilot and full scale HTS using NCI libraries with greater than 500,000 semi-purified NP samples or investigator owned libraries, optimization of drug leads (through medicinal chemistry efforts), purification and structural elucidation of active natural compounds, secondary screening, in vivo testing, and dose optimization) with the NCI DCP, DCTD or NCATS support. Once promising interventions with in vivo efficacies and lack of toxicities are identified, these natural agents can enter the NCI PREVENT pipeline for advanced preclinical development followed by moving to clinical trials through CP-CTNet program.


Investigators in the Discovery and Development of Natural Products for Cancer Interception and Prevention take advantage of NCI’s large library of “ready-to-screen,” pre-fractionated natural products to speed up bioassay-directed isolation and characterization of potential prevention agents. New natural agents discovered will move to the existing advanced preclinical development program, PREVENT, for further development towards early phase cancer prevention clinical trials by the Cancer Prevention Clinical Trials Network.

Funding Opportunity

No matching Funding Opportunities were found.

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Grantee Details

PI Name Sort descending PI Organization Title Grant Number Program Official
Acciavatti, Raymond Joseph

University Of Pennsylvania
United States

Next-Generation Tomosynthesis Pilot Study 5R37CA273959-04 Asad Umar, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Acharya, Munjal M

University Of California-Irvine
United States

Stem cell-derived exosomes to ameliorate chemobrain 5R01CA262213-03 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Acharya, Munjal M

University Of California-Irvine
United States

Stem cell-derived exosomes to ameliorate chemobrain 5R01CA262213-03 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Acoba, Jared

University Of Hawaii At Manoa
United States

The Hawaii Minority/Underserved NCORP 3UG1CA189804-11S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Acoba, Jared

University Of Hawaii At Manoa
United States

The Hawaii Minority/Underserved NCORP 3UG1CA189804-11S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Adams-Campbell, Lucile Lauren

Georgetown University
United States

National Capital Area (NCA) NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) 3UG1CA239758-06S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Adams-Campbell, Lucile Lauren

Georgetown University
United States

National Capital Area (NCA) NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) 3UG1CA239758-06S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Adebamowo, Clement Adebayo

University Of Maryland Baltimore
United States

Baltimore CASCADE Study Site (BaCSS Project) 5UG1CA284883-03 Maria Silvina Frech, Ph.D., M.S.
Afshar-Kharghan, Vahid

University Of Tx Md Anderson Can Ctr
United States

Novel Biomarkers Predicting Blood Clots in Ovarian Cancer 5R01CA275762-03 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Afshar-Kharghan, Vahid

University Of Tx Md Anderson Can Ctr
United States

Novel Biomarkers Predicting Blood Clots in Ovarian Cancer 5R01CA275762-03 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Ah, Diane Marie Von

Ohio State University
United States

Cognitive Training for Cancer-related Cognitive Impairment: A Multi-Center Randomized Controlled Trial 5R01CA276222-03 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Ah, Diane Marie Von

Ohio State University
United States

Cognitive Training for Cancer-related Cognitive Impairment: A Multi-Center Randomized Controlled Trial 5R01CA276222-03 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Ahn, Eun Hyun

Johns Hopkins University
United States

Engineered biomimetic collective cancer invasion models for screening chemotherapeutic agents 5R01CA279948-02 Guillermo Marquez, Ph.D.
Ahn, Jiyoung

New York University School Of Medicine
United States

The Oral Mycobiome and Risk of Pancreatic Cancer 5U01CA250186-04 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Alambeigi, Farshid

University Of Texas At Austin
United States

A Novel Framework for Sensitive and Reliable Early Diagnosis, Topographic Mapping, and Stiffness Classification of Colorectal Cancer Polyps 5R21CA280747-02 Matthew Young, Ph.D.

A pre-application webinar was held on May 5, 2023, and recorded. The next application due date is June 13, 2025. 

Program Contact(s)

Altaf Mohammed, Ph.D. 
Email: altaf.mohammed@nih.gov