Mary Wolpert, Ph.D., Chief, GCOB, DTP
Michael Boyd, M.D., Former Associate Director, DTP

Mary Wolpert, Ph.D.
Chief, GCOB, DTP

1. The National Cooperative Drug Discovery Group Program was started back in 1984 with the first funding of only two groups. I think this program was an experiment but one that was very successful. We've actually had four drugs that are now marketed for the treatment of cancer.

And it began with, as a brain child of Alan Sartorelli from Yale University. He had a committee of academic people and industry people and government people who worked together to put together what I think is a winning formula. There was something in it for everyone, and usually when you have a win-win situation, things do click.

2. The National Cooperative Drug Discovery Program was originally started out for the design of rational agents and, at the time, most of the projects were centered on particular targets and a design of agents to hit those targets. However, when Dr. Michael Boyd became our director, he felt that there was a vast opportunity in natural products to also encourage research using the same format of the academic, government, pharmaceutical collaboration. And we started, when Michael Boyd was the Associate Director, to also encourage natural product NCDDGs.

Michael Boyd, M.D., Ph.D.
Former Associate Director, DTP

The first set of NCDDG grants—cooperative agreements, actually, is the particular mechanism—were funded and, began operation in 1984. It appeared to be such a promising new mechanism. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the scientific and the commercial sectors to grow this program. We were able to present a number of variations to our Board of Scientific Counselors for consideration for expanding the NCDDG Program that included NCDDGs focused on modeled, animal-model development screening, as well as discovery in development related to natural products. Multiple flavors of multiple variance, if you will, over the NCDDG Program.