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U.S. National Institutes of Health

A Unique Partnership with the NCI to Facilitate Oncology Drug Discovery and Development

Do you need

  • A partner to complete development of an orphan drug for a pediatric or rare cancer?
  • Exploratory screen development and optimization?
  • Preclinical development for an agent with a specific molecular target?
  • A different formulation of your agent for it to be clinically useful?
  • Pharmaceutical-grade investigational drug to conduct clinical studies?
  • A pharmacodynamic assay or imaging technique to determine if your agent is modulating its target?
  • Proof-of-concept or first-in-human studies?
  • Other resources to support drug discovery and development?

The NExT Program, a new drug discovery and development pipeline, may be able to partner with you to bring new cancer treatments to patients.

Who: Researchers in academia, government, and industry, nationally or internationally. A list of highly ranked applications can be found here.

What: Drug discovery and development projects will enter an NCI pipeline focused on unmet needs in therapeutics that are not adequately addressed by the private sector. The NCI is committed to moving high-priority discovery and development projects through to proof-of-concept clinical trials. For more information, visit About NExT.

When: Submission deadlines occur three times per year.

Where: Online submission of NExT application.

How: Entry into NExT can occur at any stage of the drug discovery or development pipeline, but depends on favorable review of the application's scientific merit. For more information, visit How to Apply. Approved discovery and preclinical development activities may be performed by the NCI Chemical Biology Consortium, a component of NExT.

Sponsors: NCI's Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis and Center for Cancer Research.

What NExT is not: NExT is not a grant or contract mechanism. Rather, approved projects for the NCI pipeline will be provided access to the Institute's drug discovery and preclinical and clinical development resources.