The NF Preclinical Initiative (NFPI) represents one of the Children’s Tumor Foundation’s groundbreaking models of scientific collaboration.

The NFPI is aimed at accelerating proof of concept testing of potential effective repurposed drugs in NF relevant GEM models, and frontloading the clinical pipeline with new drug candidates for NF1. Launched in 2008, the NFPI is a revolutionary method dedicated to accelerating the search for NF treatments.

Currently, the NFPI joins the forces of four leading NF1 academic laboratories from Harvard University, University of California at San Francisco, Indiana University, and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital (please see Appendix for biographies of the current members). These four labs have a successful track record in preclinical drug testing. They demonstrated in the Foundation’s previous preclinical efforts that they are able to efficiently determine which drugs work, and move the efficacious ones quickly into clinical trials with NF1 patients.