NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) provides reference terminology covering vocabulary for clinical care, translational and basic research, and public information and administrative activities, providing a stable and unique identification code.

Prefix

ncit

Preferred Prefix

NCIT

Alternative Prefixes

NCIT ncithesaurus NCI NCITt NCIT_Thesaurus NCITm NCI_Thesaurus NCIt NCit NCI2004_11_17 NCIThesaurus

Keywords

biomedical science cancer dataplant disease health/disease life sciences, biology nfdi4chem obo ontology ontology/terminology/nomenclature preclinical studies thesaurus translational medicine

Version

2026-03-19

License

CC-BY-4.0

Links

Homepage Repository OBO OWL

Publications

2008 Representing the NCI Thesaurus in OWL DL: Modeling tools help modeling languages

2004 NCI Thesaurus: using science-based terminology to integrate cancer research results

Pattern for Local Unique Identifiers

Local unique identifiers in National Cancer Institute Thesaurus should match this regular expression:
^(C|R|P|A|NHC)\d+$

Example Local Unique Identifiers

C138986   Resolve
A14   Resolve
NHC0   Resolve
P320   Resolve
R123   Resolve

Pattern for CURIES

Compact URIs (CURIEs) constructed from National Cancer Institute Thesaurus should match this regular expression:
^NCIT:(C|R|P|A|NHC)\d+$

Example CURIEs

NCIT:C138986
NCIT:A14
NCIT:NHC0
NCIT:P320
NCIT:R123

Format String for RDF URIs

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/NCIT_$1

Example RDF URI

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/NCIT_C138986

Contact

NCI Thesaurus Mailbox

Identifier Space Owner

National Cancer Institute

A summary of the relations in the Semantic Farm schema can be found here.

Appears In (4)

ECTO MCO ONTOAVIDA SCDO

In Collection (7)

FHIR External Terminologies NFDI4Chem Collection Synapse.org external links DataPLANT Collection GHGA Collection NFDI4Health Collection NFDI4Immuno Collection

Mappings from records in Semantic Farm to external registries comprises the metaregistry. This resource has 16 mappings to external registries with 6 unique external prefixes.

A provider turns a local unique identifiers from a resource into a URI. Many providers are also resolvable as URLs (i.e., they can be used in a web browser).

The local unique identifier C138986 is used to demonstrate the providers available for National Cancer Institute Thesaurus. Some providers may use a different example, which is displayed in the table below. A guide for curating additional providers can be found here.

Additional providers curated in the Semantic Farm are listed here. These are typically inherited from Identifiers.org or Prefix Commons, and need extra curation.