The NCI Program for Natural Product Discovery (NPNPD) Prefractionated Library

What is the NPNPD prefractionated library?

• A library of partially-purified natural product fractions more amenable for use in high-throughput screening
• Publicly accessible, free of charge, and open to screening against all disease targets
• Launched in 2019. As of March 2023, 500,000 natural product fractions are available

What are the aims of the NPNPD?

• Reinvigorate natural product-based drug discovery research
• Prefractionate the NCI Repository of Natural Product Extracts
• Generate a library of natural product fractions for modern high-throughput targeted screening technologies
• Create integrated analytical resources for rapid isolation and structure elucidation of biologically active natural products identified in screens of NPNPD fractions
• Develop bioinformatic methods to capture, annotate, and analyze chemical and biological data on NPNPD fractions.

What is the value of the NPNPD library for drug screening?

• Important sources of new drugs and drug leads
• The largest and most diverse publicly available collection of natural product extracts and fractions available for high throughput screening

How was the NPNPD prefractionated library generated?

• A highly-automated solid-phase extraction to separate a crude natural product extract into seven fractions of decreasing polarity
• Comprised of plant, marine invertebrate, and microbial samples; represents one of the largest sources of chemical diversity available for screening

What is the format of the library for screening?

• 384-well plates containing 10 µg/well of individual samples (fractions and crude extracts) dissolved in 2 µL of DMSO
• The first two columns on each plate are empty for use as control wells in screening

Where can I find more information?

• Generation of the prefractionated library
  • https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschembio.8b00389
• Screening natural product libraries
  • https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/np/c9np00068b
• Active compound isolation and identification
  • https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschembio.0c00139
• Bioinformatic analysis of natural product activity in the NCI-60 assay
  • https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1878-0261.12849
  • https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.2c07416
• NPNPD library high throughput screening examples
  • https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsinfecdis.3c00067
  • https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.3c00010

Distribution of materials

Access is subject to completing and signing a Material Transfer Agreement. We have created 2 MTA agreements, the first is for a single principal investigator with a single project and the second is for research groups or screening centers and is suitable for multiple principal investigators.

Request contact:

Carol Haggerty
Natural Products Branch
Developmental Therapeutics Program
Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis
National Cancer Institute
Building 457, Room 27
P. O. Box B
Frederick, MD, 21702
Tel: +1.301.624.1269
Email: NCINatProdRep@mail.nih.gov

Requests should be copied to:

Barry R. O’Keefe, Ph.D.
Chief, Natural Products Branch,
Developmental Therapeutics Program
Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis
National Cancer Institute
Building 576, Room 102
P.O. Box B
Frederick, MD 21702
Tel: +1.301.846.5332
Email: okeefeba@mail.nih.gov