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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
Alexandrov, Ludmil B

University Of California, San Diego
United States

Mapping immuno-genomic drivers of the head and neck precancer invasive-disease transition 5U01CA290479-03 Wendy Wang, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Allen, Peter J

Duke University
United States

Biomarker validation for intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms of the pancreas 5R01CA182076-08 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Amuta, Ann Oyare

University Of Texas Arlington
United States

Development of Tailored, Multilevel Cervical Cancer Interventions for Ethnically Diverse Black Women 1R15CA294297-01 Goli Samimi, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Anderson, Garnet L.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
United States

NCI Cancer Screening Research Network: Coordinating and Communication Center 3UG1CA286954-02S1 Elyse LeeVan, M.D., M.P.H.
Anderson, Daniel M

Healthpartners Institute
United States

Metro-Minnesota Community Oncology Research Consortium (MMCORC) 3UG1CA189863-12S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Anderson, Daniel M

Healthpartners Institute
United States

Metro-Minnesota Community Oncology Research Consortium (MMCORC) 3UG1CA189863-12S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Anderson, Karen Sue

Arizona State University-Tempe Campus
United States

Southwest EDRN Clinical Validation Center for Head and Neck Cancer 5U01CA281660-03 Wendy Wang, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Anderson, Karen Sue

Arizona State University-Tempe Campus
United States

Southwest EDRN Clinical Validation Center for Head and Neck Cancer 5U01CA281660-03 Wendy Wang, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Arnold, Corey Wells

University Of California Los Angeles
United States

Computational Feature Profiling and Modeling for Prostate Cancer Detection and Risk Stratification 5R01CA279666-02 Indu Kohaar, Ph.D., M.Phil., M.Sc.
Atigadda, Venkatram Reddy

University Of Alabama At Birmingham
United States

Development of Potent and non-toxic rexinoids to prevent non-melanoma skin cancer 5R01CA276683-03
Backman, Vadim

Northwestern University At Chicago
United States

Optical hyperspectral nanoscale chromatin analysis for colon cancer risk-stratification 1R01CA289294-01A1 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Badu-Tawiah, Abraham

Ohio State University
United States

Multiplexed Paper-Based Blood Test for Early-Stage Colorectal Cancer Screening 5R21CA270727-02 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Badve, Sunil S.

Emory University
United States

Early prediction of lethal phenotypes in triple negative breast cancer using multiscale, multi-modality platforms 5R01CA281932-02 Wendy Wang, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Bae-Jump, Victoria Lin

Univ Of North Carolina Chapel Hill
United States

Obesity-driven Metabolic and Molecular Biomarkers of Metformin Response in Endometrial Cancer 5R37CA226969-07 Goli Samimi, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Baghdadi, Tareq Al

Saint Joseph Mercy Health System
United States

Michigan Cancer Research Consortium NCORP 3UG1CA189971-11S1 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