PubMed Drug Tracker

PubMed Drug Tracker searches NCBI PubMed for peer-reviewed medical research by drug name, disease, or keyword — returning structured records with title, abstract, authors, journal, MeSH terms, DOI, and AI-derived signals (significance, commercial relevance). Free NCBI E-utilities API, no registration needed. $0.001/paper.

Clinical research outcomes are priced into biotech stocks months before mainstream coverage catches them. Phase 3 trial results are public on PubMed the day they publish — this actor structures them for automated ingestion so you never miss a commercially relevant result.

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Why use PubMed Drug Tracker?

1. Biotech investment research — Filter for Phase 3/4 commercial_relevance: "high" papers on your watchlist compounds. significance_signal: "positive" papers often precede catalyst events.
2. Drug efficacy monitoring — Track ongoing clinical trial literature for a specific drug (e.g., semaglutide, lecanemab, tirzepatide) over time. Set yearFrom to your coverage start.
3. Competitive intelligence — Monitor what the literature says about competitor pipeline drugs. Multiple positive RCTs = validated competitive threat.
4. Medical literature review pipeline — Build automated literature review workflows. Pull 200 papers per query, filter by MeSH terms and study type, feed into your analysis system.
5. Trending research topic tracking — Aggregate MeSH terms across a query to understand which sub-topics are getting the most research attention in a disease area.

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How to use

1. Open the actor on Apify Store and click Try for free.
2. Set searchQuery to your drug name, disease, or keyword (e.g. "semaglutide weight loss", "CRISPR cancer", "mRNA vaccine efficacy").
3. Set studyTypes to focus on specific evidence levels (default: clinical trials and RCTs).
4. Set yearFrom to filter recent research.
5. Click Start. Returns structured paper records.

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchQuery	string	"semaglutide weight loss"	Drug name, disease, or medical keyword
maxResults	integer	25	Maximum papers to return (1–200)
yearFrom	integer	2020	Only include papers published from this year
studyTypes	string[]	["clinical_trial","randomized_controlled_trial"]	Study type filters

Study type values:

Value	Description
clinical_trial	Phase 1–4 clinical trials
randomized_controlled_trial	RCTs (highest evidence level)
review	Systematic reviews and literature reviews
meta_analysis	Statistical pooling of multiple studies

Leave studyTypes as [] to return all study types (including case reports, observational studies, basic science).

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Output

{
  "pmid": "38734512",
  "title": "Semaglutide and cardiovascular outcomes in obesity...",
  "abstract": "BACKGROUND: Obesity is associated with...",
  "authors": ["Lincoff AM", "Brown-Frandsen K", "Colhoun HM"],
  "journal": "New England Journal of Medicine",
  "publication_date": "2023-Dec",
  "year": 2023,
  "study_type": "randomized_controlled_trial",
  "mesh_terms": ["Obesity", "Semaglutide", "Cardiovascular Diseases"],
  "doi": "10.1056/NEJMoa2307563",
  "paper_url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38734512/",
  "abstract_word_count": 312,
  "has_results": true,
  "significance_signal": "positive",
  "commercial_relevance": "high",
  "fetched_at": "2026-09-02T10:00:00Z"
}

Intelligence signal fields

Field	Values	Description
has_results	boolean	Abstract contains "results", "findings", or "outcomes"
significance_signal	positive / negative / neutral	Detects efficacy framing (positive = drug showed benefit)
commercial_relevance	high / medium / low	Phase 3/4 = high; Phase 1/2 = medium; basic science = low

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Cost estimation

Pay-Per-Event: $0.001 per paper returned.

Use case	Papers	Estimated cost
Quick drug scan (25 papers)	25	$0.025/run
Deep literature review (200 papers)	200	$0.20/run
Weekly monitoring (50 papers)	50	$0.05/week
Daily trial result alerts (10 papers)	10	$0.01/day

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Example queries

Query	Use case
semaglutide diabetes	GLP-1 weight-loss drug RCT outcomes
CRISPR cancer	Gene-editing oncology research
mRNA vaccine efficacy	Vaccine clinical trials
tirzepatide obesity	GLP-1/GIP agonist competition
Alzheimer lecanemab	Amyloid-targeting drug trials
ketamine depression	Novel antidepressant research

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FAQ

Does it require an NCBI API key? No — the actor uses NCBI E-utilities' free unauthenticated tier (3 requests/second). A 0.4s delay between batches keeps it within rate limits. For very high-volume use (thousands of papers/day), consider registering for a free NCBI API key.

How accurate is significance_signal? It uses keyword heuristics on the abstract text — not AI. It detects "significant improvement", "statistically significant", "did not meet primary endpoint", etc. Accurate for clear-cut cases; may miss nuanced neutral results. Always read the full abstract to verify.

How current is PubMed data? PubMed adds new records within days of a journal's publication date. Ahead-of-print (epub) articles appear immediately. The actor queries whatever is live at run time.

Can I search for multiple drugs at once? Each run takes one searchQuery. For multi-drug monitoring, run the actor with different queries or use PubMed's boolean syntax: "semaglutide OR tirzepatide".

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Feedback

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