NCCIH Natural Products Policy Provides Guidance to Researchers for 15 Years | NCCIH

NCCIH Natural Products Policy Provides Guidance to Researchers for 15 Years | NCCIH

NCCIH Natural Products Policy Provides Guidance to Researchers for 15 Years

July 22, 2020 

Craig Hopp, Ph.D. 

NCCIH’s mission includes research on a wide range of natural products, from vitamins and minerals to other single-constituent supplements (such as resveratrol, melatonin, and glucosamine), complex plant extracts, and probiotics. If you haven’t applied for a grant from us in this topic area, you may not know about the steps NCCIH takes to make sure the research we fund on natural products adheres to high standards for rigor and reproducibility. This effort is manifested in our Product Integrity Policy. I’ll introduce you to the Policy and offer some comments as we mark the 15-year point from its launch. 

The primary goal of the Product Integrity Policy is to support confidence that natural products in NCCIH-funded studies are well characterized (i.e., their composition defined) such that the Center, the investigator, and peer reviewers can know the results will be properly interpreted and, if necessary, reproducible. Examples of information we require include product name and appropriate data to establish identity and purity; justification or rationale for use, including use of the supplier, chosen form, source parts, and mode of administration; and, for clinical studies, some other information such as known safety issues, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, biological or chemical markers of activity, applicable regulations, and the recommendations of expert bodies.