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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

No matching Funding Opportunities were found.

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Grantee Details

PI Name Sort descending PI Organization Title Grant Number Program Official
Faller, Bryan

Decatur Memorial Hospital
United States

Heartland Cancer Research NCORP 3UG1CA189830-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Faller, Bryan

Decatur Memorial Hospital
United States

Heartland Cancer Research NCORP 3UG1CA189830-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Farrar, Christian T

Massachusetts General Hospital
United States

Novel metabolomic contrast probes for human lung cancer characterization 4R01CA273010-04 Guillermo Marquez, Ph.D.
Feng, Ziding

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
United States

Consortium on Translational Research in Early Detection of Liver Cancer:Data Management and Coordinating Center (DMCC) 5U24CA230144-09 Guillermo Marquez, Ph.D.
Fiol, Guilherme Del

University Of Utah
United States

GARDE: Scalable Clinical Decision Support for Individualized Cancer Risk Management 5U24CA274582-03 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Fitzgibbon, Marian L.

University Of Illinois At Chicago
United States

Mediterranean Diet and Weight Loss: Targeting the Bile Acid/Gut Microbiome Axis to Reduce Colorectal Cancer Risk 5R01CA250390-05 Young Kim, Ph.D.
Flory, James H

Sloan-Kettering Inst Can Research
United States

Managing metabolic disruption in pancreatic cancer to prevent weight loss and improve quality of life 5R21CA277464-02 Gabriela Riscuta, M.D., CNS
Flory, James H

Sloan-Kettering Inst Can Research
United States

Managing metabolic disruption in pancreatic cancer to prevent weight loss and improve quality of life 5R21CA277464-02 Gabriela Riscuta, M.D., CNS
Flowers, Lisa C.

Emory University
United States

Georgia Consortium to Eliminate Cervical Cancer in Women Living with HIV (GaCECC-WLWH) 5UG1CA284884-03 Maria Silvina Frech, Ph.D., M.S.
Flowers, Lisa C.

Emory University
United States

Screening Strategies Among High-Risk Populations for Anal Cancer 5R01CA285198-03 Vikrant Sahasrabuddhe, M.B.B.S., M.P.H., Dr.P.H.
Flynn, Kathryn E

Medical College Of Wisconsin
United States

Symptom Monitoring using Patient-Reported Outcomes to Optimize Medication Use (SyMPTOM) 5R01CA285925-02 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Flynn, Kathryn E

Medical College Of Wisconsin
United States

Symptom Monitoring using Patient-Reported Outcomes to Optimize Medication Use (SyMPTOM) 5R01CA285925-02 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Forsberg, Flemming

Thomas Jefferson University
United States

Prostate Cancer Diagnosis by Multiparametric Ultrasound 5R01CA252311-05
Frazier, Anne Lindsay

Dana-Farber Cancer Inst
United States

Assay Validation of a Circulating miRNA Test for Diagnosis and Monitoring of Malignant Germ Cell Tumors 5UH3CA240688-05 Nicholas Hodges, Ph.D.
Freedland, Stephen Jay

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
United States

Intermittent Fasting using a Fasting-Mimetic Diet to Improve Prostate Cancer Control and Metabolic Outcomes 3R01CA280081-03S1 Young Kim, 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