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
Eldridge, Ronald C

Emory University
United States

Integrative Multi-Omics of Metabolomics and Epigenetics to Explore thePathophysiology of Cachexia and Survival in Head and Neck SquamousCell Carcinoma 1R03CA304028-01 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Eldridge, Ronald C

Emory University
United States

Integrative Multi-Omics of Metabolomics and Epigenetics to Explore thePathophysiology of Cachexia and Survival in Head and Neck SquamousCell Carcinoma 1R03CA304028-01 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Elenitoba-Johnson, Kojo S. J.

Sloan-Kettering Inst Can Research
United States

Genomic biomarkers of splenic lymphoma 5R01CA255655-06 Nicholas Hodges, Ph.D.
Elias, Kevin

Cleveland Clinic Lerner Com-Cwru
United States

Ovarian cancer risk stratification using circulating miRNAs to assess BRCAness 7R03CA283252-02 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Ellerton, John A

Southern Nevada Cancer Research Fdn
United States

NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Community Sites (UG1 Clinical Trial Required) 3UG1CA189829-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Ellerton, John A

Southern Nevada Cancer Research Fdn
United States

NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Community Sites (UG1 Clinical Trial Required) 3UG1CA189829-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Ellsworth, Grant B.

Weill Medical Coll Of Cornell Univ
United States

Partnership for Prevention of HPV-Associated Cancers in People Living with HIV: Brazil, Mexico, and Puerto Rico 3U54CA242639-06S3 Maria Silvina Frech, Ph.D., M.S.
Elmore, Joann G

University Of California Los Angeles
United States

Optimizing the Human-Computer Interaction in Pathology: Understanding the Impact of Computer-Aided Diagnosis Tools on Pathologists' Interpretive Performance 1R01CA288824-01A1 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Elswick, Ronald K

Virginia Commonwealth University
United States

A Randomized Controlled Trial using a Heuristic Tool To Improve Symptom Self-Management in Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer 5R01CA286799-03 Asad Umar, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Elswick, Ronald K

Virginia Commonwealth University
United States

A Randomized Controlled Trial using a Heuristic Tool To Improve Symptom Self-Management in Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer 5R01CA286799-03 Asad Umar, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Elswick, Ronald K

Virginia Commonwealth University
United States

A Randomized Controlled Trial using a Heuristic Tool To Improve Symptom Self-Management in Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer 5R01CA286799-03 Asad Umar, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Esserman, Laura J

University Of California, San Francisco
United States

Extending the Diversity, Reach, and Generalizability of the WISDOM Study 5R01CA237533-05 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Esserman, Laura J

University Of California, San Francisco
United States

WISDOM: A platform to optimize subtype-specific screening and prevention 5P01CA281826-02 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Fabian, Carol J.

University Of Kansas Medical Center
United States

Biomarker-Based Phase IIB Trial of (Bazedoxifene-Conjugated Estrogen) to Reduce Risk for Breast Cancer 5R01CA249437-05 Edward Sauter, M.D., Ph.D.
Fahrmann, Johannes F

University Of Tx Md Anderson Can Ctr
United States

Blood-Based Biomarkers for Personalized Risk Assessment of Breast and Ovarian Cancer 5U01CA282216-03 Claire Zhu, 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