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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
Lesser, Glenn J

Wake Forest University Health Sciences
United States

Wake Forest NCORP Research Base 3UG1CA189824-11S2 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Li, Christopher I

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
United States

Fred Hutchinson Breast Cancer Clinical Validation Center 5U01CA152637-15 Sidney Fu, M.D.
Li, Christopher I

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
United States

Fred Hutchinson Breast Cancer Clinical Validation Center 5U01CA152637-15 Sidney Fu, M.D.
Li, Debiao

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
United States

Predicting Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) Through Artificial Intelligence Analysis of Pre-Diagnostic CT Images 5R01CA260955-05 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Li, Bo

Children'S Hosp Of Philadelphia
United States

Tracking Peripheral T-Cell Repertoire Changes for Preoperative and Early Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis 5R01CA258524-05 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Li, Bing

University Of Iowa
United States

E-FABP mediates n-3 fatty acid-induced tumor prevention through epigenetic control of immune cell differentiation and function 5R01CA180986-11 Nancy J. Emenaker, Ph.D., RDN, LD, FAND
Li, Feng

University Of California Los Angeles
United States

Novel ultra-short cell free DNA biomarkers for early detection of non-small cell lung cancer. 5R21CA283665-02 Guillermo Marquez, Ph.D.
Li, Yong

Baylor College Of Medicine
United States

Cancer Prevention-Interception Against MGUS Progression 5U54CA272691-03 Anda Vlad, M.D., Ph.D.
Li, Chi

University Of Louisville
United States

A lung cancer vaccine based on exosomes of induced pluripotent stem cells 1R21CA280453-01 John Clifford, Ph.D.
Liang, Han

University Of Tx Md Anderson Can Ctr
United States

The Cancer Proteome Atlas: an Integrated Bioinformatics Resource for Functional Cancer Proteomic Data 5U24CA264128-04 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Ligibel, Jennifer A.

Dana-Farber Cancer Inst
United States

Distance-based Exercise to preserve Function and prevENt Disability (DEFEND) 5U34CA293568-02 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Ligibel, Jennifer A.

Dana-Farber Cancer Inst
United States

Distance-based Exercise to preserve Function and prevENt Disability (DEFEND) 5U34CA293568-02 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Ligibel, Jennifer A.

Dana-Farber Cancer Inst
United States

Distance-based Exercise to preserve Function and prevENt Disability (DEFEND) 5U34CA293568-02 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Lin, Jia-Ren

Harvard Medical School
United States

Advancing technologies for the collection and analysis of high dimensional immunoprofiles and tumor images 5R50CA274277-04 Guillermo Marquez, Ph.D.
Lindau, Stacy Tessler

University Of Chicago
United States

Bionic Breast Project: A Neuroprosthesis to Restore Touch Sensation and Reduce Chronic Pain After Mastectomy 5R01CA281301-03 Marjorie Perloff, M.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