Cancer Gov NCI Syndication API

Name: NCI Syndication API
Brand: NCI Syndication API
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentHealthcareClinical DataapiKey7 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search NCI clinical trials, drug dictionary, glossary, sitewide search, Best Bets, and researcher resources from a single consolidated API.

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the NCI Syndication API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the NCI Syndication API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with NCI Syndication API.

Search active and completed cancer clinical trials by disease, intervention, location, and phase via /trials

Retrieve a single trial's full record including eligibility criteria via /trials/{nci_id}

Look up cancer-specific medical terminology via /glossary/v1/Terms

GET STARTED

Start building with NCI Syndication API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for NCI Syndication API, keeping it validated and agent-ready. The National Cancer Institute Syndication API is the consolidated entry point for NCI's public services, including clinical-trial search, the medical glossary, the drug dictionary, sitewide search of cancer.gov, Best Bets editorial picks, and the R4R researcher-resource catalog. Seven GET endpoints expose these services across two host environments and are intended for research portals, oncology decision-support tools, and patient-information agents.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use NCI Syndication API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Clinical Trial Matching for Patients

Patient advocacy and decision-support tools help cancer patients find relevant trials. /trials accepts disease, location, age, and intervention filters and returns matching trials with status and lead-organisation details, so a tool can shortlist candidates in seconds. /trials/{nci_id} then loads full eligibility criteria for the patient and clinician to review.

GET /trials with disease='breast cancer', location='Boston, MA', and recruitment_status='OPEN', then GET /trials/{nci_id} for the top result to retrieve eligibility criteria.

Oncology Decision Support and Drug Lookup

Clinical decision-support agents need authoritative drug and term definitions tied to NCI nomenclature. /drugdictionary/v1/Drugs returns drug records including aliases and indications, and /glossary/v1/Terms returns definitions in plain English suitable for surfacing to patients or clinicians inline.

GET /drugdictionary/v1/Drugs filtered by name='pembrolizumab' to retrieve indications, then GET /glossary/v1/Terms for any unfamiliar pathology term referenced in the result.

Patient-Education Content Surfacing

Cancer-information chatbots surface curated content from cancer.gov. /sitewidesearch/v1/Search returns content matches across the site, and /bestbets/v1/BestBets returns editorially-selected pages for high-traffic topics, giving a chatbot a high-quality fallback before generating freeform answers.

GET /bestbets/v1/BestBets for query='chemotherapy side effects' and surface the top editorially-curated link before falling back to /sitewidesearch/v1/Search results.

AI Agent Cancer-Research Workflows via Jentic

Through Jentic, an agent searches for 'find cancer clinical trials', loads the input schema for /trials, and executes the call without managing the X-API-KEY header. Jentic's vault holds the NCI API key so it never enters the agent's prompt context.

Use the Jentic SDK to search 'find cancer clinical trials', load the /trials operation schema, and execute it with disease and location filters supplied by the patient.

Key Endpoints

7 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for nci syndication api, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/trials

Search NCI clinical trials

GET

/trials/{nci_id}

Retrieve a single clinical trial by NCI ID

GET

/drugdictionary/v1/Drugs

Search the NCI drug dictionary

GET

/glossary/v1/Terms

Search NCI cancer terminology glossary

GET

/sitewidesearch/v1/Search

Sitewide search across cancer.gov

GET

/bestbets/v1/BestBets

Retrieve editorially-curated Best Bets

GET

/r4r/v1/Resources

Search Resources for Researchers

GET

/trials

Search NCI clinical trials

GET

/trials/{nci_id}

Retrieve a single clinical trial by NCI ID

GET

/drugdictionary/v1/Drugs

Search the NCI drug dictionary

GET

/glossary/v1/Terms

Search NCI cancer terminology glossary

GET

/sitewidesearch/v1/Search

Sitewide search across cancer.gov

Why Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

The NCI API key is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents receive scoped execution rights and Jentic injects the key into the X-API-KEY header at call time, so the raw key never enters the agent's context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (for example, 'find cancer clinical trials' or 'look up a cancer drug') and Jentic returns the matching NCI operation with its input schema, so the agent can call /trials, /drugdictionary/v1/Drugs, or /glossary/v1/Terms without browsing the cancer.gov developer portal.

Time to first call

Direct NCI integration: half a day to a day for key registration, multi-host routing, and per-resource pagination. Through Jentic: under one hour to search, load, and execute.

FAQs

Specific to using NCI Syndication API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for NCI Syndication API?

The National Cancer Institute documents its syndication services individually but does not publish a consolidated OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call NCI Syndication API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

What authentication does the NCI Syndication API use?

It uses an API key passed in the X-API-KEY header. Through Jentic, the key is stored in the Jentic vault and injected into the X-API-KEY header at execution time, so the raw key never enters the agent's prompt context.

Can I search for clinical trials by disease and location?

Yes. GET /trials accepts disease, location, recruitment_status, age, and phase filters and returns matching trials. Use the returned NCI ID with GET /trials/{nci_id} to retrieve the full record including eligibility criteria.

How do I look up a cancer drug through Jentic?

Search 'look up a cancer drug' through the Jentic SDK. Jentic returns GET /drugdictionary/v1/Drugs with its input schema. Provide a name or partial-match term and execute the operation to retrieve drug records with aliases and indications.

Are there separate hosts for clinical trials versus other services?

Yes. Clinical-trial endpoints live on https://clinicaltrialsapi.cancer.gov/api/v2 and the other syndication services live on https://webapis.cancer.gov. Both servers are listed in the OpenAPI spec; pick the one matching the operation's path.

Is the NCI Syndication API free?

Yes. NCI provides the API free of charge with an API key obtained through the cancer.gov developer portal. Honour any rate limits or terms of use noted in your key registration.