PubMed & ClinicalTrials.gov Research Data

Search and extract medical research data from PubMed (35M+ biomedical articles) and ClinicalTrials.gov (500K+ clinical studies). Two of the world's most important biomedical databases in one Actor.

Why use this Actor?

• Official NIH data — direct from the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health
• No API key required — both APIs are free and open
• No proxy needed — accessible worldwide
• 2 databases in one — PubMed articles + ClinicalTrials.gov studies
• Rich metadata — authors, journals, MeSH terms, DOIs, trial phases, sponsors, outcomes
• Abstracts included — full abstract text for PubMed articles

How much does it cost?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. You are charged per result item returned.

No proxy costs. No API key costs.

Two data sources

PubMed

Over 35 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. Covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, health care systems, and preclinical sciences.

Returns: article title, authors, journal, publication date, DOI, abstract, publication type.

ClinicalTrials.gov

Over 500,000 clinical studies from 228 countries. The world's largest database of clinical trials.

Returns: NCT ID, title, status, conditions, interventions, phases, enrollment, sponsor, outcomes, eligibility criteria.

Input parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
source	Yes	pubmed	pubmed or clinical_trials
query	Yes	-	Search terms
dateFrom	No	-	Start date
dateTo	No	-	End date
studyStatus	No	all	ClinicalTrials: filter by status
includeAbstract	No	true	PubMed: include abstract text
maxResults	No	100	Maximum results

Example: PubMed output

{
    "pmid": "38123456",
    "title": "Advances in Cancer Immunotherapy: A Comprehensive Review",
    "authors": ["Smith J", "Johnson K", "Williams R"],
    "firstAuthor": "Smith J",
    "journal": "Nature Reviews Cancer",
    "pubDate": "2026 Jan",
    "doi": "10.1038/s41568-026-0001-2",
    "abstract": "Cancer immunotherapy has transformed oncological treatment...",
    "pubType": ["Review"]
}

Example: ClinicalTrials.gov output

{
    "nctId": "NCT06123456",
    "title": "Phase 3 Study of Drug X in Advanced Melanoma",
    "status": "RECRUITING",
    "conditions": ["Melanoma"],
    "interventions": ["Drug X", "Placebo"],
    "phases": ["PHASE3"],
    "enrollment": 450,
    "sponsor": "Pharma Corp",
    "countries": ["United States", "Germany", "Japan"],
    "primaryOutcomes": ["Overall Survival"]
}

Use cases

• Literature review — search PubMed for specific topics, drugs, or diseases
• Competitive intelligence — track clinical trials by competitor, drug, or indication
• Drug development — monitor clinical trial landscape for specific conditions
• Academic research — build datasets for meta-analyses and systematic reviews
• Pharmacovigilance — track safety-related publications and trial results
• Market research — analyze pharmaceutical R&D pipelines

Technical details

• PubMed: Uses NCBI E-utilities (esearch, esummary, efetch). Rate limited to 3 requests/second without API key.
• ClinicalTrials.gov: Uses the v2 API released in 2023. Returns structured JSON data.
• Both APIs are maintained by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.