Skip to main content
An official website of the United States government
Email

Preclinical Therapeutics Grants Branch (PTGB)

Word Cloud for the PTGB

The Preclinical Therapeutics Grants Branch (PTGB) supports preclinical research in the areas of discovery, development, and evaluation of agents to treat cancer. These agents include small molecules of either synthetic or natural product origin, peptides, antisense oligonucleotides, and siRNAs/miRNAs. Studies focused on drug design and screening are supported, up to but not including clinical trials. Drug targets include components of the tumor microenvironment (excluding immune cells that are supported by the ImmunoOncology Branch), components of signaling pathways or cellular networks associated with proliferation and oncogenesis. Studies may involve biochemical, cell-based, or in vivo (non-mammalian and mammalian) animal models, or human tissue specimens for verification of preclinical observations.

Major areas of study supported by PTGB include, but are not limited to:

  • small molecule anti-cancer drug discovery, chemical optimization and characterization.
  • small-molecule targeting or modulation of oncogenic and tumor suppressor pathways, including antibody-drug conjugates, and nanotechnology-based drugs.
  • identification and validation of new therapeutic targets.
  • mechanism(s) of action for new or existing drugs that lead to more effective drugs, improved treatment regimens, or analysis of drug combination strategies.
  • mechanism(s) of resistance to anti-cancer agents, and identification of strategies to overcome resistance or mitigate treatment-associated toxicities.
  • mechanism(s) of efficacy and toxicity for cancer drugs, with an emphasis on the roles of underlying biological systems as characterized by studies of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, pharmacogenomics, pharmacogenetics, proteomics and metabolomics, and the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches. 

PTGB staff work at the nexus of the external grantee and research communities, and the internal Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP) and the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD), where non-grant resources for drug discovery and development are available. These include access to the NCI drug and natural product repositories, the NCI patient-derived models repository, the NCI60 cell line screening data, and consultation services.

If you would like to reproduce some or all of this content, see Reuse of NCI Information for guidance about copyright and permissions. In the case of permitted digital reproduction, please credit the National Cancer Institute as the source and link to the original NCI product using the original product's title; e.g., “Preclinical Therapeutics Grants Branch (PTGB) was originally published by the National Cancer Institute.”

Email