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NCI's Natural Products Branch has contractors collect natural specimens from all over the world. Marine algae and invertebrates - but not animals with backbones, such as fish - are collected off the coast of Australia and Southeast Asia.

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Plants have been collected all over the world, from North and South America to the forests of Madagascar. Field scientists take a sample from each part of the plant: bark, leaves, fruit, flowers, and roots. The cancer drug taxol came from the bark of the Pacific yew tree.

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Samples are shipped from the field to NCI's Natural Products Repository in Frederick, Maryland, where they must be quarantined for 48 hours to meet U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations. Marine samples are frozen to prevent decomposition which occurs rapidly at room temperature.

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When they are ready for testing, samples are ground and then extracted in water and organic solvents. The resulting solution is available to non-NCI scientists for drug testing.

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The solutions are tested for anti-cancer activity against several kinds of cancer cells including breast, ovarian, prostate, and kidney cancers. If a solution shows anti-cancer activity, NCI scientists perform a kind of molecular filtration to find the active compound. If this molecule is not toxic to lab animals, it will move into clinical trials.