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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
Plas, Ellen Van Der

Arkansas Children'S Hospital Res Inst
United States

Identifying markers of abnormal neurocognitive trajectories during chemotherapy treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia 5R37CA266135-04 Asad Umar, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Plas, Ellen Van Der

Arkansas Children'S Hospital Res Inst
United States

Identifying markers of abnormal neurocognitive trajectories during chemotherapy treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia 5R37CA266135-04 Asad Umar, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Porter, Laura S

Duke University
United States

Couple Communication Skills Training for Advanced Cancer 5R01CA229425-05 Brennan Streck, Ph.D., RN, M.P.H.
Porter, Laura S

Duke University
United States

Couple Communication Skills Training for Advanced Cancer 5R01CA229425-05 Brennan Streck, Ph.D., RN, M.P.H.
Pozdeyev, Nikita

University Of Colorado Denver
United States

Genetic architecture of thyroid cancer and its clinical utility 5R21CA282380-02 Wendy Wang, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Prigerson, Holly Gwen

Weill Medical Coll Of Cornell Univ
United States

Behavioral and Psychosocial Effects on Study Outcomes in End-Stage Cancer Treatment (BEST End-Stage Cancer Study) 5R35CA197730-11 Brennan Streck, Ph.D., RN, M.P.H.
Prigerson, Holly Gwen

Weill Medical Coll Of Cornell Univ
United States

Behavioral and Psychosocial Effects on Study Outcomes in End-Stage Cancer Treatment (BEST End-Stage Cancer Study) 5R35CA197730-11 Brennan Streck, Ph.D., RN, M.P.H.
Punnen, Sanoj

University Of Miami School Of Medicine
United States

The Rigor and Clinical Utility of PSMA Enriched Extracellular Vesicles for Prostate Cancer Detection 5R01CA272766-03 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Pyter, Leah M

Ohio State University
United States

Chemotherapy-induced circadian master clock disruptions and fatigue 3R01CA270372-03S1 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Pyter, Leah M

Ohio State University
United States

Chemotherapy-induced circadian master clock disruptions and fatigue 3R01CA270372-03S1 Marjorie Perloff, M.D.
Rajagopalan, Malolan S

Columbus Community Clinical Oncology Prg
United States

Columbus NCORP RFA-CA-18-016 3UG1CA189954-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Rajagopalan, Malolan S

Columbus Community Clinical Oncology Prg
United States

Columbus NCORP RFA-CA-18-016 3UG1CA189954-11S1 Vanessa A. White, M.P.H.
Rajkumar, S Vincent

Mayo Clinic Rochester
United States

Onset and biomarkers for progression of monoclonal gammopathies 5R01CA168762-11 Nicholas Hodges, Ph.D.
Ramanujam, Nirmala

Duke University
United States

Development and Validation of an Artificial-Intelligence-enabled Portable Colposcopy Device for Optimizing Triage Alternatives for HPV-based Cervical Cancer Screening 3U01CA269192-04S1 Vikrant Sahasrabuddhe, M.B.B.S., M.P.H., Dr.P.H.
Rao, Chinthalapally V.

University Of Oklahoma Hlth Sciences Ctr
United States

Discovery and Development of Natural Products for Interception of CRC 5UG3CA290310-02 Kajal Biswas, 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