Molecular Targets Program

In addition to the intramural community of world-class scientists comprising the CCR, there are other unique resources available at the NCI that provide extraordinary opportunities for intramural collaborations in molecular target elucidation, validation and drug discovery research. Such a resource is the NCI Natural Products Repository (NPR), which contains the largest and most diverse natural products extracts collection in the world. The NPR collection is derived from more than 15 years of NCI contracts-based collections programs led by renowned botanical, marine science and microbial research professionals and organizations globally. The NPR resource is available to NCI/NIH intramural scientists, as well as qualified extramural scientists and organizations, subject to institutional policies, procedures, and constraints described in detail elsewhere. Each of the nearly 150,000 unique samples residing in the NPR comprises many thousands of individual compounds in a complex aqueous or organic solvent extract matrix. Effectively, the total chemical diversity residing in the NPR equates to tens to hundreds of millions, if not billions of different, often very complex, structures. This provides a rich resource for discovery of novel research probes for molecular target manipulation, and new potential leads for drug discovery research and development. However, the isolation, purification, and structural elucidation of these unique leads from such complex extracts requires highly specialized skills and technologies.

MTP scientists have extensive experience in developing and applying bioassays and high-throughput technologies tailored for prioritization bioassay-guided fractionation, purification and characterization of novel lead molecules from natural product extracts. A catalog of structures, biological activities and bibliographical information on compounds isolated and characterized from the NPR by MTP scientists to date is available. The MTP invites proposals from CCR intramural investigators for collaborative research on molecularly targeted lead-discovery research of natural products. The MTP may also consider collaborative projects for molecularly targeted lead-discovery from natural product extracts or collections originating from selected collaborating researchers or organizations other than from the NPR. In such cases, collaborative projects are considered based both upon unique and mutual scientific drug discovery and development interests and resources of the collaborating parties.

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