13872 IUPAC Gold Book - bioactive 10.1351/goldbook.13872 13872 current 1 Qualifier for a substance that provokes any response from a living system. This definition is derived from "material which has been designed to induce specific biological activity" and is limited to material made bioactive on purpose. However, the concept of bioactivity does not imply beneficial action only, although the term is often used positively, i.e., to reflect a beneficial action. bioactivity https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13873 PAC, 2012, 84, 377. 'Terminology for biorelated polymers and applications (IUPAC Recommendations 2012)' on page 380 (https://doi.org/10.1351/PAC-REC-10-12-04) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13872/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13872/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13872/plain Citation: 'bioactive' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.13872 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-05-08T08:57:27+00:00