Skip to main content
An official website of the United States government

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.

On This Page

  • All Heading 2s will automatically be pulled in to this list.
  • Do not edit the content on this template.

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.

View All Funding Opportunities

Grantee Details

PI Name Sort descending PI Organization Title Grant Number Program Official
Demb, Joshua Brian

University Of California, San Diego
United States

Optimal early colorectal cancer screening initiation 4R00CA267181-03 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Demehri, Shadmehr

Massachusetts General Hospital
United States

Immunosurveillance of breast glands with oncogenic germline mutations 5UG3CA290300-02 Altaf Mohammed, Ph.D.
Deng, Gary E

University Of California-Irvine
United States

Acupuncture to Improve Outcomes in Patients with Sepsis: a Randomized Controlled Trial 7R21CA286330-03 Goli Samimi, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Deng, Jie

University Of Pennsylvania
United States

Placebo-Controlled Phase II Randomized Clinical Trial of Photobiomodulation Therapy in Head and Neck Cancer Survivors with Chronic Lymphedema 1R01CA289307-01A1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Deng, Youping

University Of Hawaii At Manoa
United States

Circulating lipid and miRNA markers for early detection of breast cancer among women with abnormal mammograms 5R01CA230514-05 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Dhakal, Soma

Virginia Commonwealth University
United States

Single-Molecule High-Confidence Detection of miRNA Cancer Biomarkers 5R61CA278445-03 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Diaz, Juan Sebastian Gomez

University Of California At Davis
United States

A miniaturized neural network enabled nanoplasmonic spectroscopy platform for label-free cancer detection in biofluids 3R01CA273253-03S1 Nicholas Hodges, Ph.D.
Dickinson, Sally E

University Of Arizona
United States

Investigating novel targets for topical immunoprevention of keratinocytic skin cancer 1UG3CA290443-01A1 Altaf Mohammed, Ph.D.
Digirolamo, Gregory James

Univ Of Massachusetts Med Sch Worcester
United States

Increasing Nodule Detection in Lung Cancer by Non-Conscious Detection of "Missed" Nodules and Machine Learning 5R01CA269903-04
Doescher, Mark P

University Of Oklahoma Hlth Sciences Ctr
United States

Oklahoma Tribal, Rural, Urban Cancer Screening Trial ACCESS Hub 3UG1CA287044-02S1 Elyse LeeVan, M.D., M.P.H.
Doolittle, Gary C.

University Of Kansas Medical Center
United States

The University of Kansas Cancer Center's- MCA Rural NCORP- extension 3UG1CA239767-06S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Doolittle, Gary C.

University Of Kansas Medical Center
United States

The University of Kansas Cancer Center's- MCA Rural NCORP- extension 3UG1CA239767-06S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Drake, Richard R.

Medical University Of South Carolina
United States

Targeted Isolation and Identification of Sialylated Glycoproteins in Cancer Tissues, Cells and Biofluids 5R33CA267226-03
Drescher, Charles

Swedish Medical Center, First Hill
United States

The Pacific Cancer Research Consortium (PCRC), an NCORP Community Site 3UG1CA189953-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Drescher, Charles

Swedish Medical Center, First Hill
United States

The Pacific Cancer Research Consortium (PCRC), an NCORP Community Site 3UG1CA189953-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.

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