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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

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Grantee Details

PI Name Sort descending PI Organization Title Grant Number Program Official
Johnson, Constance Margaret

University Of Texas Hlth Sci Ctr Houston
United States

Auricular Point Acupressure to Manage Chemotherapy Induced Neuropathy 3R01CA245054-05S1 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Johnson, Constance Margaret

University Of Texas Hlth Sci Ctr Houston
United States

Auricular Point Acupressure to Manage Chemotherapy Induced Neuropathy 3R01CA245054-05S1 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Johnson, Constance Margaret

University Of Texas Hlth Sci Ctr Houston
United States

Auricular Point Acupressure to Manage Chemotherapy Induced Neuropathy 3R01CA245054-05S1 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Johnson, Jeremy James

University Of Illinois At Chicago
United States

Defining the role of isoprenylated xanthones from the mangosteen for enhancing degradation of full length and variant forms of androgen receptor in prostate cancer 5R37CA227101-07 Amit Kumar, Ph.D.
Judge, Andrew Robert

University Of Florida
United States

The Complement System and Cancer Cachexia 5R01AR081648-04 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Judge, Andrew Robert

University Of Florida
United States

The Complement System and Cancer Cachexia 5R01AR081648-04 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Justilien, Verline

Mayo Clinic Jacksonville
United States

ECT2 Isoform Switch in Pancreatic Cancer. 1R21CA296671-01 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Kachnic, Lisa A.

Columbia University Health Sciences
United States

Columbia University NCI Community Oncology Research Program 3UG1CA189960-11S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Kachnic, Lisa A.

Columbia University Health Sciences
United States

Columbia University NCI Community Oncology Research Program 3UG1CA189960-11S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Kahalley, Lisa Schum

Baylor College Of Medicine
United States

Comparison of Symptom Burden/Toxicity, Neurocognitive Change, and Functional Outcomes in Pediatric Brain Tumor Patients Treated with Proton vs. Photon Radiotherapy. 3R01CA249988-05S3 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Kahalley, Lisa Schum

Baylor College Of Medicine
United States

Comparison of Symptom Burden/Toxicity, Neurocognitive Change, and Functional Outcomes in Pediatric Brain Tumor Patients Treated with Proton vs. Photon Radiotherapy. 3R01CA249988-05S3 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Kahalley, Lisa Schum

Baylor College Of Medicine
United States

Comparison of Symptom Burden/Toxicity, Neurocognitive Change, and Functional Outcomes in Pediatric Brain Tumor Patients Treated with Proton vs. Photon Radiotherapy. 3R01CA249988-05S3 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Kahalley, Lisa Schum

Baylor College Of Medicine
United States

Comparison of Symptom Burden/Toxicity, Neurocognitive Change, and Functional Outcomes in Pediatric Brain Tumor Patients Treated with Proton vs. Photon Radiotherapy. 3R01CA249988-05S3 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Kalpathy-Cramer, Jayashree

University Of Colorado Denver
United States

AI algorithm development for cervical cancer screening in low resource settings 1R21CA305472-01 Nicholas Hodges, Ph.D.
Kanarek, Naama

Boston Children'S Hospital
United States

Mechanistic Study of Methotrexate-Induced Oxidative Distress in Neurons and the CSF 5R01CA282477-02 John Clifford, 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