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Biopharmaceutical Resources
Evolving terminology for emerging technologies
Suggestions? Comments? Questions?
Mary Chitty
MSLS mchitty@healthtech.com
Last revised January 09, 2020



Sources used in compiling definitions include web only, print only and web/ print resources. Not everything is on the web. See also How to find other unfamiliar terms. 

Websites and Books
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Glossary of Terms, Acronyms and Abbreviations http://www.aicpa.org/Press/DownloadableDocuments/Acronyms_and_Abbreviations.pdf

AO-VNMR Glossary, Albin Otter, Chemistry Dept. Univ. of Alberta, Canada.  http://nmr.chem.ualberta.ca/AOWWW/  About 50 terms.

ATSDR Glossary, Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry, http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/glossary.html 2009

Bains, William, Biotechnology A-Z, Oxford University Press, 2003. About 400 entries/definitions. 

Bandolier EBM Evidence Based Medicine Glossary  http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/glossary.html

Bioinformatics definitions CMGM, Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, Stanford Univ. 2000. 1000 + definitions.  http://cmgm.stanford.edu/help/definitions/

BioLINC Glossary, NHLBI https://biolincc.nhlbi.nih.gov/glossary/ 

Cancer.gov dictionary, National Cancer Institute, NIH, US,  4,000 plus terms. http://www.cancer.gov/dictionary/

CDISC, Glossary Terms Version 7.0 http://www.cdisc.org/search/index.php?findtext=glossary  [download]

CDISC, Acronym, Abbreviations and Initials, 2010 http://www.cdisc.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/0/08a36984bc61034baed3b019f3a87139/misc/act1210_049_058_acronyms.pdf 

CenterWatch Glossary, 1995 - 2018, 100+ definitions http://www.centerwatch.com/patient/glossary.html

ClinicalTrials.gov Glossary of Clinical Trials Terms, National Library of Medicine, 2005. http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/info/glossary 

Creighton, Thomas E., Encyclopedia of Molecular Biology, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1999. 4 volumes.

Cochran Collaborative Glossary  2018. http://www.cochrane.org/glossary/5 

Contract Pharma Glossary of Pharmaceutical and Biopharmaceutical Terms, revised annually 500 plus terms http://www.contractpharma.com/glossary 

DDBJ/ ENA/ GenBank Feature Table, 2018  http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/Documentation/FT_definitions/feature_table.html

Dorland’s Medical Dictionary Online, Elsevier https://www.dorlandsonline.com/dorland/home

Ensembl Glossary http://uswest.ensembl.org/common/Help/Glossary?db=core 

Encyclopedia of Analytical Instrumentation, Brian Tissue, Chemistry Hypermedia Project, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, US, 1995- 2003.http://www.tissuegroup.chem.vt.edu/chem-ed/

FAO Term Portal  Food and Agricultural Organization, Searchable database,  Not just for food or agriculture.  http://www.fao.org/faoterm/en

FDA, CDER, Glossary Drugs@FDA https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-approvals-and-databases/drugsfda-glossary-terms

FDAReview.org Glossary, Independent Institute, 2016 http://www.fdareview.org/glossary.shtml 

FOLDOC Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, Denis Howe,  http://foldoc.org/   Part of OneLook.com

Glick, David M., Glossary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2014 

GO Term definitions, Gene Ontology Consortium TM , http://www.geneontology.org/  

Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001-2018 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php 

Holmgren Lab, Life Science Glossary, Northwestern Univ. 2004 http://www.biochem.northwestern.edu/holmgren/Glossary/Definitions.html Extensive collection of developmental biology, genetic, cell biology, molecular biology, molecular genetic, and biochemistry definitions.

Howe, Walt, Glossary of Internet Terms,  2012  http://www.walthowe.com/glossary/

Human Genome Variation Society, Nomenclature 2013 http://varnomen.hgvs.org/

Insight Pharma Reports , Cambridge Healthtech

Intel Glossary  https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/topics/glossary.html 

International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation SEE SNOMED

International Society for Stem Cell Research, Glossary, https://www.closerlookatstemcells.org/patient-resources/stem-cell-glossary

IUPAC  Glossary of Terms used in Bioinorganic Chemistry, Recommendations, 1997. 450+ definitions. http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iupac/bioinorg/

IUPAC, Terminology for biorelated polymers and applications, 2012 https://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/pdf/2012/pdf/8402x0377.pdf

IUPAC  Glossary for Chemists of terms used in biotechnology. Recommendations, Pure & Applied Chemistry 64 (1): 143-168, 1992. 200 + definitions.

IUPAC  Nomenclature for chromatography, L.S. Ettre, editor, Pure and Applied Chemistry 65: 819-872, 1993.  450+ definitions. http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/1993/pdf/6504x0819.pdf 

IUPAC Glossary of Terms Used in Combinatorial Chemistry, D. Maclean, J. J. Baldwin, V.T. Ivanov, Y. Kato, A. Shaw, P. Schneider, and E. M.. Gordon, Pure Appl. Chem., Vol. 71, No. 12, pp. 2349-2365, 1999. 100+ definitions. http://www.iupac.org/reports/1999/7112maclean/

IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology: Recommendations, compiled by Alan D. McNaught and Andrew Wilkinson, Blackwell Science, 1997. "Gold Book" 6500+ definitions. http://goldbook.iupac.org/   Does not include Glossary of Bioinorganic Chemistry (1997) or Glossary of Medicinal Chemistry (1998). 

IUPAC Glossary of terms used in Computational Drug Design, Part I, 1997 https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/pac.1997.69.issue-5/pac199769051137/pac199769051137.xml?utm_source=TrendMD&utm_medium=TrendMD&utm_campaign=TrendMD_0

IUPAC Glossary of Terms used in Computational Drug Design, Part II 2015 https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/pac.2016.88.issue-3/pac-2012-1204/pac-2012-1204.pdf 

IUPAC Poole, C., Mester, Z., Miró, M., et al. (2016). Glossary of terms used in extraction (IUPAC Recommendations 2016). Pure and Applied Chemistry, 88(5), pp. 517-558.  doi:10.1515/pac-2015-0903  https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/pac.ahead-of-print/pac-2015-0903/www.degruyter.com/view/j/pac.ahead-of-print/pac-2015-0903/pac-2015-0903.xml

IUPAC Definitions of terms relating to mass spectrometry (IUPAC Recommendations 2013)   https://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/85/7/1515/

IUPAC Recommendations for nomenclature and symbolism for Mass Spectroscopy, Pure and Applied Chemistry 63:1541-1563, 1991. About 275 definitions.

IUPAC Glossary of terms used in medicinal chemistry. Part II (IUPAC Recommendations 2013) http://pac.iupac.org/publications/pac/pdf/2013/pdf/8508x1725.pdf

IUPAC Glossary of terms in Biomolecular Screening 2011 http://iupac.org/publications/pac/83/5/1129/

IUPAC, Glossary of terms related to pharmaceutics, Pure and Applied Chemistry 81, 971–999, 2009, 168 definitions  http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/pdf/2009/pdf/8105x0971.pdf  

IUPAC  Glossary of Terms used in Photochemistry, 3rd ed. 2006  http://iupac.org/publications/pac/79/3/0293/ 

IUPAC Glossary of Terms used in Physical Organic Chemistry, Recommendations 1994. 700+ definitions.  http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iupac/gtpoc/

IUPAC Glossary of Terms in Quantities and Units in Clinical Chemistry, Biochim Clin 1995; 19: 471-502. Around 300 definitions  Pure & Applied Chemistry 68: 957- 1000, 1996

IUPAC Terminology of Stereochemistry Recommendations, 1996. 250+ definitions. http://www.chem.qmw.ac.uk/iupac/stereo/

IUPAC, Glossary of bioanalytical nomenclature - Part 1: General terminology, body fluids, enzymology, immunology Recommendations 1994 http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/1994/pdf/6612x2587.pdf 

IUPAC, Glossary for toxicokinetics of chemicals, 365 terms. https://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2004/pdf/7605x1033.pdf Published Pure & Applied Chemistry 76 (5): 1033-1082, 2004

IUPAC CHEMISTRY AND HUMAN HEALTH DIVISION, IUPAC GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED IN TOXICOLOGY, 2nd EDITION - IUPAC RECOMMENDATIONS 2007 Published in Pure Appl. Chem., Vol. 79, No. 7, pp. 1153-1344, 2007 http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/iupacglossary/frontmatter.html

IUPAC, Glossary of terms used in theoretical organic chemistry, 1999 http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/1999/71_10_pdf/7110mirkin_1919.pdf

IUPAC Nomenclature in laboratory robotics and automation, 1994 http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/1994/pdf/6603x0609.pdf 

IUPAC Postgenomic Chemistry  Pure and Applied Chemistry 77 (9) , 1641 - 1654, 2005 
http://www.iupac.org/objID/Article/pac7709x1641
  

IUPAC, International Federation of Clinical Chemistry, Committee on Molecular Biology Techniques in Clinical chemistry, Committee on Nomenclature, Properties and Units, Properties and units in Clinical Molecular Biology, 2004 http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2004/pdf/7609x1799.pdf Pure and Applied Chemistry 76 (9): 1799-1
  
Jackson Lab, Mouse Genome Informatics Glossary http://www.informatics.jax.org/glossary

King, Robert C. and William D. Stansfield, Dictionary of Genetics, Oxford University Press

Lackie, JM and JAT Dow, Dictionary of Cell & Molecular Biology, Academic Press, 3rd ed., 1999. 7,000+ definitions.   

Lewin, Benjamin Genes IX  http://biology.jbpub.com/book/genes/  2011, Extensive glossary 800 + definitions  

Lyons Robert H., A Molecular Biology Glossary: A Quick and Dirty Reference to Terms Used in Molecular Biology, Univ. of Michigan DNA sequencing core, 1998. http://seqcore.brcf.med.umich.edu/doc/educ/dnapr/mbglossary/mbgloss.html

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, Sybil Parker, editor 2000. 105,000 terms. 

MeSH Medical Subject Headings, (PubMed Browser) National Library of Medicine, Revised annually.  MeSH has over 28,000 descriptors in MeSH with over 90,000 entry terms…." In addition to these headings, there are more than 240,000 Supplementary Concept Records (SCRs) within a separate file.   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=MeSH&term= 

MeSH Qualifiers with Scope Notes, National Library of Medicine, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/topsubscope.html  

Mouse Genome Informatics Glossary, Jackson Lab, US,  250+ definitions. 2006 http://www.informatics.jax.org/javawi2/servlet/WIFetch?page=glossaryIndex&print=no  

NIH NCBI Chemicals and bioassays https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/guide/chemicals-bioassays/

NIH NCBI National Center for Biotechnology Information, Glossary, 1996. 13 definitions. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SCIENCE96/Glossary.html

NCBI BLAST Glossary, 2011 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62051/

NIH National Library of Medicine,  Genetics Home Reference glossary, 2018  http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/ghr/glossary/Glossary 

NIH NHGRI (National Human Genome Research Institute), Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms, 250+ definitions. https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary Includes extended audio definitions.

NIH, Office of Extramural Research, Grants and Funding Glossary & Acronyms 2013  http://grants.nih.gov/grants/glossary.htm  
    NIH Acronym list, 2013  http://grants.nih.gov/grants/acronym_list.htm

NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology, Dictionary of Algorithms, Data Structures and Problems, Paul E. Black, 1998 updated 2017  http://hissa.nist.gov/dads/terms.html

OED Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1989 plus supplements 1993-1997. 3rd edition:  http://www.oed.com

Online Medical Dictionary, MondoFacto 2008-2010 http://www.mondofacto.com/dictionary/medical.html 

OneLook Dictionaries, Bob Ware http://onelook.com/index.html  Index to 900+ online dictionaries.

ORD Office of Rare Diseases, NIH, Rare Diseases Terms, 2003,  300 + definitions http://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/RareDiseaseList.aspx

Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Oxford University Press,  Online version 2008 http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198529170.001.0001/acref-9780198529170  

Pelikan, Edward, Glossary of terms and symbols used in pharmacology, Boston University Medical School, US, 1998 - 2004, about 300 definitions.  http://www.bumc.bu.edu/Dept/Content.aspx?DepartmentID=65&PageID=7797 

Photonics Dictionary, Laurin Publishing Co. Inc. 8,000 plus definitions  https://www.photonics.com/EDU/Dictionary.aspx

PhyloCode Glossary, Ohio Univ. US, 2000 - 2006.  42 definitions. http://www.ohiou.edu/phylocode/glossary.html

Quinion, Michael Affixes http://www.affixes.org/ prefixessuffixescombining forms and infixes.

Quinion, Michael  World Wide Words: investigating international English from a British viewpoint, Michael Quinion. 1996 - 2017 http://www.quinion.com/words/index.htm  

RePORT Expenditures and Results (RePORTER)  NIH  SBIR awards

SGD Saccharomyces Genome Database Glossary Terms,  http://seq.yeastgenome.org/help/general-help/glossary

Schlindwein Birgid, Hypermedia Glossary of Genetic Terms, 2006. 670 definitions. http://www.weihenstephan.de/~schlind/index.html

Science glossaries Science "Functional Genomics Resources": Educational resources: A guide to some useful online glossaries http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/plus/sfg/education/glossaries.shtml  Categories cover genetics and genomics, general biology and molecular biology, post-genomics biotech and bioinformatics, medical genomics and specific organisms. Includes Genomic glossaries.

SNOMED https://www.snomed.org/  SNOMED International determines global standards for health terms.

SWISS PROT Keywords SEE UniPROT Knowledge Base Keywords

UCMP Glossary of Natural History Terms: Vol. 1, Phylogenetics terms, Univ. of California, Berkeley [US] Museum of Paleontology, 2009 http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss1phylo.html

UMLS National Library of Medicine, (US) Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), 2009-2016. About 800,000 concepts and 1.9 million concept names in over 60 different biomedical source vocabularies.  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/   

W3C Glossary and Dictionary https://www.w3.org/2003/glossary/  as of May 2010, it is no longer maintained, but the archived copy of its content remains available.

UNI-PROT KnowledgeBase keywords http://beta.uniprot.org/keywords/   Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva Switzerland, European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK, PIR Protein Information Resource, 2018

Web search glossary, Google http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50187 60 definitions

Webopedia, 2018  http://www.webopedia.com/  

whatis.com Information Technology encyclopedia, 1999-2018. http://whatis.techtarget.com/   Part of[Onelook

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page  Not always definitive, but a good starting point for overviews on many topics. 

WordSpy, Paul McFedries 2018  http://www.wordspy.com/  

Zhang, Yong-he and Meng Zhang, A Dictionary of Gene Technology Terms, Parthenon Publishing Group, 2001, 3,000 + definitions   

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