NCI Thesaurus: a semantic model integrating cancer-related clinical and molecular information.
Over the last 8 years, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has launched a major effort to integrate molecular and clinical cancer-related information within a unified biomedical informatics framework, with controlled terminology as its foundational layer. The NCI Thesaurus is the reference terminology underpinning these efforts. It is designed to meet the growing need for accurate, comprehensive, and shared terminology, covering topics including: cancers, findings, drugs, therapies, anatomy, genes, pathways, cellular and subcellular processes, proteins, and experimental organisms. The NCI Thesaurus provides a partial model of how these things relate to each other, responding to actual user needs and implemented in a deductive logic framework that can help maintain the integrity and extend the informational power of what is provided. This paper presents the semantic model for cancer diseases and its uses in integrating clinical and molecular knowledge, more briefly examines the models and uses for drug, biochemical pathway, and mouse terminology, and discusses limits of the current approach and directions for future work.
Sioutos
Nicholas
N
Aspen Systems Corporation, USA.
de Coronado
Sherri
S
Haber
Margaret W
MW
Hartel
Frank W
FW
Shaiu
Wen-Ling
WL
Wright
Lawrence W
LW
D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D009316:National Institutes of Health (U.S.); D009363:Neoplasm Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000145:classification* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012660:Semantics; D018511:Systems Integration; D014481:United States; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled
D009363:Neoplasm Proteins