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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
Taratula, Oleh

Oregon State University
United States

Novel Nanomedicine-Based Therapeutic Approach For Treatment of Cancer Cachexia 5R37CA234006-07 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Taratula, Oleh

Oregon State University
United States

Novel Nanomedicine-Based Therapeutic Approach For Treatment of Cancer Cachexia 5R37CA234006-07 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Tayob, Nabihah

Dana-Farber Cancer Inst
United States

Biomarker screening algorithms for the improved early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma 5R01CA230503-07 Nicholas Hodges, Ph.D.
Tearney, Guillermo J

Massachusetts General Hospital
United States

Colorectal Cancer Screening with Optical Coherence Tomography 5R01CA280972-02 Matthew Young, Ph.D.
Temprosa, Marinella

George Washington University
United States

22/22 Limited Competition for the Continuation of the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS) – Biostatistics Center 2U01DK048489-28 Brandy Heckman-Stoddard, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Tennis, Meredith A

University Of Colorado Denver
United States

Modeling lung squamous cell carcinoma premalignancy and prevention 1R01CA298925-01
Tennis, Meredith A

University Of Colorado Denver
United States

Persistence and regression in lung premalignant lesions 1R01CA289576-01A1 Malgorzata Wojtowicz, M.D.
Terry, Kathryn L.

Brigham And Women'S Hospital
United States

Changing Contraceptive Patterns and Ovarian Cancer Risk 5R01CA258679-05 Goli Samimi, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Tewari, Ashutosh K

Icahn School Of Medicine At Mount Sinai
United States

Artificial intelligence enabled Stroma-Weighted Automated Grading system to improve risk stratification in Black Men 1R01CA290438-01A1 Indu Kohaar, Ph.D., M.Phil., M.Sc.
Thakur, Mathew Laxman

Thomas Jefferson University
United States

Noninvasive, Uniplex, Molecular, Pathomic Urinary Assay for Detection of Prostate Cancer 5R01CA249921-05
Thangaraju, Muthusamy

Augusta University
United States

Bacteria-derived xenobiotics in colon cancer prevention: Link to GPR109A and colonic ketogenesis 5R01CA275840-03
Thompson, Patricia Ann

University Of Arizona
United States

University of Arizona Cancer Prevention Clinical Trials Network 2UG1CA242596-07 Donald Johnsey
Thompson, Patricia Ann

State University New York Stony Brook
United States

Three-Arm randomized trial comparing the effect of aspirin, sulindac or no treatment control on breast density in patients with elevated breast cancer risk 5R01CA235720-05 Edward Sauter, M.D., Ph.D.
Tollefsbol, Trygve O

University Of Alabama At Birmingham
United States

Combinatorial epigenetic-based prevention of breast cancer 5R01CA178441-10 Gabriela Riscuta, M.D., CNS
Tong, Frank

Vanderbilt University
United States

Learning the visual and cognitive bases of lung nodule detection 5R01CA240274-05

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