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Q. How are NCI Thesaurus concepts related to UMLS Concept Unique Identifiers (CUIs)?

The NCI Thesaurus is one of the vocabulary sources included in the NCI Metathesaurus, a vocabulary resource that maps terms from multiple sources to unique concepts identified by a Concept Unique Identifier, or CUI. The NCI Metathesaurus is partially based on the UMLS Metathesaurus; CUIs in the NCI Metathesaurus originate predominantly from assignments made in the UMLS. When NCI Thesaurus concepts are mapped (or merged) to UMLS concepts in the NCI Metathesaurus, they become associated with the CUI of the parent UMLS concepts. If an NCI Thesaurus concept doesn't have an equivalent UMLS concept to merge to, a CUI is still assigned to it; however, this CUI is specific to the NCI
Metathesaurus. In the NCI Metathesaurus, the CUI identifies each concept; in the standalone NCI Thesaurus, the concept code is the actual identifier.

Q. What is the difference between the NCI Thesaurus and the Metathesaurus?

The NCI Thesaurus is the NCICB preferred terminology for creating metadata (e.g. data elements) in the caDSR.

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Using the NCI Metathesaurus: If you are attempting to curate a new CDE based on a set of permissible values and you do not know the exact source of the values for that question, you could use the NCI Metathesaurus and leverage the mapping between the different terminologies to determine if the permissible values were based in some part on a standard (i.e. LOINC). As a curator, you may then want to make the decision to standardize those permissible values to that terminology based on that match.