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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
Kober, Kord Michael

University Of California, San Francisco
United States

An Investigation of the Molecular Mechanisms for and Prediction of the Severity of Cancer Chemotherapy-Related Fatigue Using a Multi-staged Integrated Omics Approach 5R37CA233774-07 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Kolb, Noah Allan

University Of Vermont & St Agric College
United States

Remote Monitoring of Management of Chemotherapy induced Peripheral Neuropathy 5R01CA247517-05 Brennan Streck, Ph.D., RN, M.P.H.
Kolb, Noah Allan

University Of Vermont & St Agric College
United States

Remote Monitoring of Management of Chemotherapy induced Peripheral Neuropathy 5R01CA247517-05 Brennan Streck, Ph.D., RN, M.P.H.
Kong, Mei

University Of California-Irvine
United States

Using dietary glutamine supplementation for melanoma prevention and targeted therapy 5R01CA244360-05 Gabriela Riscuta, M.D., CNS
Kooperberg, Charles L

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
United States

Statistics and Data Management Center (SDMC) for the NCI Cancer Screening Research Network (CSRN) 5UG1CA287013-02 Elyse LeeVan, M.D., M.P.H.
Kresty, Laura A

University Of Michigan At Ann Arbor
United States

Developing Natural Products to Target IL-8 Signaling and Intercept Progression of Barrett’s Esophagus to Esophageal Adenocarcinoma 1UG3CA299397-01 Altaf Mohammed, Ph.D.
Krist, Alexander H

Virginia Commonwealth University
United States

Virginia Cancer Screening Research Network Access Hub (Virginia CSRN Hub) 3UG1CA287017-02S1 Elyse LeeVan, M.D., M.P.H.
Kroetz, Deanna L

Ohio State University
United States

Sphingolipid Signaling and Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neurotoxicity 5R01CA261068-06 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Kroetz, Deanna L

Ohio State University
United States

Sphingolipid Signaling and Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neurotoxicity 5R01CA261068-06 Rachel Altshuler, Ph.D.
Kuhn, Peter

University Of Southern California
United States

Multi-modal Liquid Biopsy Early Assessment of Breast Cancer, Pancreatic Cancer, and Multiple Myeloma 4U01CA285013-03 Nicholas Hodges, Ph.D.
Kumar, Nagi B.

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Ctr & Res Inst
United States

Phase II Clinical trial of GTC in Men on Active Surveillance 5R01CA235032-06 Howard L. Parnes, M.D.
Labaer, Joshua

Arizona State University-Tempe Campus
United States

Multiplex In-Solution Protein Array (MISPA) for high throughput, quantitative, early profiling of pathogen-induced head and neck 5R33CA281802-03 Wendy Wang, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Labaer, Joshua

Arizona State University-Tempe Campus
United States

High-throughput immunoproteomics for cancer biomarker discovery 5U2CCA271903-04 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Lampe, Paul D.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
United States

Autoantibodies to tumor-derived neoepitopes as biomarkers and immunoPET agents for the early detection of small cell lung cancer 5R01CA281801-03 Guillermo Marquez, Ph.D.
Langel, Stephanie N.

Case Western Reserve University
United States

Antibody bound bacteria during HPV infection and cervical dysplasia 3R21CA289927-02S1 Goli Samimi, Ph.D., 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