Preclinical

adj

adj ·4 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Describing the period of a disease before any symptoms appear
  2. 2
    Describing a test or trial of a new pharmaceutical on animals (or in vitro) rather than on humans
Adjective
  1. 1
    of or relating to the early phases of a disease when accurate diagnosis is not possible because symptoms of the disease have not yet appeared wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
presymptomatic

Example

More examples

"The Director of the Preclinical and Translational Cancer Research Program at the American Cancer Society said the study is exciting because it shows efficacy with humans."

Etymology

From pre- + clinical.

Related phrases

in vitro

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.