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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
Lindau, Stacy Tessler

University Of Chicago
United States

Bionic Breast Project: A Neuroprosthesis to Restore Touch Sensation and Reduce Chronic Pain After Mastectomy 5R01CA281301-03 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Lindau, Stacy Tessler

University Of Chicago
United States

Bionic Breast Project: A Neuroprosthesis to Restore Touch Sensation and Reduce Chronic Pain After Mastectomy 5R01CA281301-03 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Lindau, Stacy Tessler

University Of Chicago
United States

Bionic Breast Project: A Neuroprosthesis to Restore Touch Sensation and Reduce Chronic Pain After Mastectomy 5R01CA281301-03 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Linnes, Jacqueline

Purdue University
United States

Point-of-care screening test for early cervical cancer detection 5R01CA246315-05 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Lipkin, Steven M

Weill Medical Coll Of Cornell Univ
United States

CAP-IT Center for LNP RNA Immunoprevention 5U54CA272688-04 John Clifford, Ph.D.
Liu, Changchun

University Of Connecticut Sch Of Med/Dnt
United States

Low-Cost CRISPR-on-Paper for Cervical Cancer Screening at the Point of Care 3U01CA269147-04S1 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Liu, Yang

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign
United States

Imaging nanoscale chromatin folding in early carcinogenesis 5R01CA254112-07 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Livneh, Zvi

Weizmann Institute Of Science
United States

Analysis of the predictability of lung cancer using DNA Repair functional assays and cryopreserved blood samples of the PLCO prospective cohort 5U01CA279001-03 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Lokshin, Anna E

University Of Pittsburgh At Pittsburgh
United States

Development of Novel Ovarian Cancer Biomarkers for Early Detection Algorithms 5R01CA247220-05 Christos Patriotis, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Lokshin, Anna E

University Of Pittsburgh At Pittsburgh
United States

Urine and serum biomarkers for early diagnosis and risk assessment of pancreatic cancer 5R01CA254036-05 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Lowry, Kathryn Paige

University Of Washington
United States

Evaluation of Commercial Mammography-Based Artificial Intelligence Algorithms for Breast Cancer Risk Prediction in U.S. Screening Populations 5R37CA292399-02 Claire Zhu, Ph.D.
Lu, Junxuan

Pennsylvania State Univ Hershey Med Ctr
United States

Early clinial trials for Angelica herbal supplements for prostate cancer interception 4R01CA260901-04 Gabriela Riscuta, M.D., CNS
Lubman, David M.

University Of Michigan At Ann Arbor
United States

Serum Glyco-Markers of Early Hepatocellular Carcinoma Using a Mass Spec Approach 5R01CA160254-14 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Lyden, David Charles

Weill Medical Coll Of Cornell Univ
United States

Application of 4D proteomics and super-resolution microscopy in extracellular vesicle and particle-borne biomarker discovery for early pancreatic cancer detection 5R01CA218513-08 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Maclean, Paul S.

University Of Colorado Denver
United States

Novel dietary interventions for reducing obesity-associated breast cancer 5R01CA258766-04 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