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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
Friday, Bret E.B.

Essentia Institute Of Rural Health
United States

Essentia Health Community Cancer Research Program - NCORP 3UG1CA189812-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Friday, Bret E.B.

Essentia Institute Of Rural Health
United States

Essentia Health Community Cancer Research Program - NCORP 3UG1CA189812-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Furuta, Saori

Case Western Reserve University
United States

Normalizing arginine metabolism with sepiaptein for immunostimulatory-shift ofHER2+ breast cancer 5R01CA248304-05
Fuschiotti, Patrizia

University Of Pittsburgh At Pittsburgh
United States

Develop IL13Ra1 for diagnosis of early-stage mycosis fungoides 5R21CA280445-02 Wendy Wang, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Garcia, Jose M.

Seattle Inst For Biomedical/Clinical Res
United States

SArcopenia in Men with Prostate Cancer undergoing ADT (SAP-ADT) 5R01CA279220-02 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Garcia, Jose M.

Seattle Inst For Biomedical/Clinical Res
United States

SArcopenia in Men with Prostate Cancer undergoing ADT (SAP-ADT) 5R01CA279220-02 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Geisler, Stefanie

Washington University
United States

Developing mechanism-based strategies to treat chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy 5R37CA267905-04 Asad Umar, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Geisler, Stefanie

Washington University
United States

Developing mechanism-based strategies to treat chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy 5R37CA267905-04 Asad Umar, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Germain, Doris A

Icahn School Of Medicine At Mount Sinai
United States

Investigating the efficacy of g-Tocotrienol for the prevention of post-partum breast cancer 1R01CA301372-01 Anda Vlad, M.D., Ph.D.
Germain, Doris A

Icahn School Of Medicine At Mount Sinai
United States

Exploring ovarian-derived hormone STC1 as the mediator of the protective effect of breast feeding against breast cancer. 5R21CA270702-02 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Ghamande, Sharad A.

Augusta University
United States

Georgia CaRes 3UG1CA189851-11S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Ghamande, Sharad A.

Augusta University
United States

Georgia CaRes 3UG1CA189851-11S1 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Ghobrial, Irene M.

Dana-Farber Cancer Inst
United States

Myeloma multidimensional precancer atlas 4U01CA294507-02 Nicholas Hodges, Ph.D.
Ghobrial, Irene M.

Dana-Farber Cancer Inst
United States

Molecular prediction of myeloma in African Americans 5U01CA271492-04 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Ghosh, Jayashri

Temple Univ Of The Commonwealth
United States

Development of blood-based methylation biomarkers for CRC risk prediction 5R01CA281948-03 Matthew Young, 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