National Cancer Institute program

Paclitaxel is a mitotic inhibitor used in cancer chemotherapy. It was discovered in the US National Cancer Institute program in 1967 when Moiuoe E. WaU and Mansukh C. Wani isolated it from the bark of the Pacific yew tree, Taxus brevifolia, and named it taxol. When it was developed commercially, the generic name was changed to paclitaxel. 

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) database is a collection of more than half a million structures, assembled by NCI s Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP) or its predecessors in the course of NCTs anti-cancer screening efforts that started in the late 1950s (plus the more recent anti-HIV screening) [37-39]. Approximately half of this database is publicly available without any usage restrictions, and is therefore called the "Open NCI Database. For each of these structures (more than 250 000) the DTP record contains at least the chemical structure as a coimection table and an NCI accession number, the NSC number. 

Today, 3D databases, which provide the means for storing and searching for 3D information of compounds, are proven to be useful tools in drug discovery programs. This is well exemplified with the recent discovery of novel nonpeptide HIV-1 protease inhibitors using pharmacophore searches of the National Cancer Institute 3D structural database [13-15]. 

NCI. 1979. Bioassay of methyl parathion for possible carcinogenicity. Bethesda, MD U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Carcinogenesis Testing Program. DHEW (NIH) Publication No. 79-1713 NCI-CG-TR-157, 112. 

Figure 8.2 Example of a 2D substructure search. The search is for the diphenyl ether query substructure at the top of the figure, below which are shown five of the hits resulting from a search of the National Cancer Institute database of molecules that have been tested in the US government anticancer program (see URL http //dtp.nci. nih.gov/). This database is also used for the search outputs shown in Figures 8.3 and 8.4.

NCI. 1976. Carcinogenesis bioassay of trichloroethylene (CAS No. 79-01-6). Bethesda, MD National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention, Carcinogenesis Program, Carcinogen Bioassay and Program Resources Branch. NCI-CG-TR-2, DHEW Publ. No. (NIH) 76-802. 

This research program was supported by Public Health Service Contract NOl-CP-55666 and National Cancer Institute Grant IPOl CA 29580. 

This work was supported by Grant No. ES 00881 from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (N1EHS) and Special Bnphasis Research Career Award Grant No. OH 00022 from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the Centers for Disease Control. It is part of a Center program supported by Grant ES 00260 from NIEHS and Grant CA 13343 from the National Cancer Institute. The author wishes to thank Mr. Robert Sussman who assisted with all of the laboratory studies. 

Archer, V.J., Oncology Overview, Selected Abstracts on Risk of Cancer from Exposure to Low Level Ionizing Radiation, PB84-922906, International Cancer Research Data Bank Program, National Cancer Institute, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Salt Lake City, Utah, (August 1984) ... 

COMPARE Program. National Cancer Institute/National Institute of Health Developmental Therapeutics Program, http //dtp.nci.nih.gov/index.html... 

Studies related to the mechanisms of nitric oxide reactions with transition metal complexes in this laboratory were supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, by a Collaborative UC/Los Alamos National Laboratory Research grant, by a grant from the U.S. Japan Cooperative Research Program (Photoconversion/ Photosynthesis) (NSF INT 9116346), and by a grant from the ACS Petroleum Research Fund. We thank the students and postdoctoral fellows at UC Santa Barbara who participated in this research and acknowledge collaborative studies with Dr. David Wink (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda MD, USA), Dr. Mikio Hoshino (RIKEN, Wako-shi, Japan) and Dr. Jon Schoonover (Los Alamos National Laboratory). 

Pharmacological activity has been studied for about 40 T. alkaloids. Some of these have been studied during a plant antitumor screening program carried out under the auspices of the National Cancer Institute of the U.S. National Institute... 

Cameron, T.P., Hickman, R.L., Komreich, M.R. and Tarone, R.E. (1985). History, survival, and growth patterns of B6C3F1 mice and F344 rats in the National Cancer Institute Carcinogenesis Testing Program. Fundam. Appl. Toxicol. 5 526-538. 

Kluwe WM, McConnell EE, Huff JE, et al. 1982. Carcinogenicity testing of phthalate esters and related compounds by the National Toxicology Program and the National Cancer Institute. Environ Health Perspect 45 129-133. 

NCI National Cancer Institute. NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, is the federal government s principal agency for cancer research. NCI conducts, coordinates, and funds cancer research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs with respect to the cause, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer. Access the NCI Web site at http //cancer.gov. [NIH]... 

Zubrod, C.G. et al., The chemotherapy program of the National Cancer Institute history, analysis and plans, Cancer Chemother. Rep., 50, 349-350, 1966. 

NCI. 1976. Report on carcinogenesis bioassay of chloroform. Bethesda, MD Carcinogenesis Program, National Cancer Institute. 

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