BioCatalystFeed

An open-source catalyst feed for biotech: see what changed across clinical trials, FDA actions, NIH grants, papers/preprints and SEC filings for the companies and drugs you follow. Use it as a CLI, as an MCP server for AI agents (Claude, Cursor, …), or as an Apify actor.

⚠️ Not investment, legal or medical advice. Data may be incomplete, delayed or wrong; PDUFA dates are unverified candidates from SEC filings. Always check the linked primary source.

What it does

Source	Command	What you get
ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 (NLM)	bcf trials	search, sponsor pipelines, diffs: new trials, status/phase/enrollment/date changes
openFDA (Drugs@FDA, SPL labels)	bcf fda	approvals (incl. novel NME/BLA flag), submissions, label revisions, diffs
NIH RePORTER	bcf grants	grants by org / PI (middle-initial aware) / keyword; new awards, amount changes
PubMed + Europe PMC + bioRxiv/medRxiv	bcf papers	papers & preprints, deduplicated by DOI/PMID across sources
SEC EDGAR	bcf sec	8-K mentions of PDUFA dates (UNVERIFIED candidates, linked to the filing)
All of the above	bcf profile	one merged company profile (name or ticker)

Across tools: --exclude TERM … to drop noise, --rank for relevance ordering, and --rss / --json-feed digest files on every watch (local files you can serve or feed into any reader; nothing is emailed).

Quickstart

pip install biocatalystfeed            # or: uvx biocatalystfeed --help
source .venv/bin/activate

bcf trials search --sponsor "Viking Therapeutics" --phase PHASE3
bcf papers search --drug resmetirom --since 2026-09-01 --exclude mice rat --rank
bcf grants search --pi "Ioannou, George N" --since 2024-01-01 --no-future
bcf sec pdufa MDGL --since 2023-01-01
bcf profile Lilly MDGL "Viking Therapeutics" --md profiles.md

# watches: first run = baseline, later runs report what changed (cron it daily)
bcf trials --db bcf.db watch --name obesity --condition obesity --phase PHASE3 --rss obesity.rss
bcf papers --db bcf.db watch --name mdgl --affiliation "Madrigal Pharmaceuticals" --json-feed mdgl.feed.json

The old commands (trialwatch, fdawatch, grantwatch, paperwatch, secwatch, trialwatch-mcp) still work.

MCP server

{"mcpServers": {"biocatalystfeed": {"command": "uvx", "args": ["biocatalystfeed", "mcp"],
  "env": {"BIOCATALYSTFEED_DB": "/path/to/bcf.db"}}}}

(or point command at an installed biocatalystfeed-mcp). Listed in the official MCP Registry as io.github.biocatalystfeed/biocatalystfeed. Tools include search_trials, sponsor_pipeline, fda_approvals, company_profile, search_grants, search_papers, sec_pdufa_mentions, snapshot_* / *_changes_since, and changes_feed (RSS / JSON Feed).

Configuration

Env var	Purpose
BIOCATALYSTFEED_CONTACT	contact email put in the SEC User-Agent (SEC fair-access policy). Default is the project contact ([email protected]); set it to your own contact for heavy SEC use
SEC_USER_AGENT	full SEC User-Agent override
NCBI_EMAIL	optional email sent to NCBI E-utilities
OPENFDA_API_KEY	optional openFDA API key (free at open.fda.gov/apis/authentication); raises daily/minute rate limits. Never logged
NCBI_API_KEY	optional NCBI E-utilities API key (free from your NCBI account settings); raises the PubMed limit from 3 to 10 req/s. Never logged
BIOCATALYSTFEED_DB (or TRIALWATCH_DB)	SQLite DB for the MCP server
FDAWATCH_ALIASES	JSON file extending the company alias table

How it compares

Facts about DataLookout are from datalookout.com/citeline-alternative (checked 2026-10-12 PT). We have not tested their product. Fuller, cited comparison: docs/COMPARISON.md.

	BioCatalystFeed (open source)	DataLookout
Price	Free (Apache-2.0); hosted tier planned	Free tier; Pro $49/month
Sources	ClinicalTrials.gov, openFDA, NIH RePORTER, PubMed, Europe PMC, bioRxiv/medRxiv, SEC EDGAR	ClinicalTrials.gov
Change tracking	Diffs between your own runs (trials: status, phase, enrollment, dates, sponsor, title, why stopped, results; plus FDA, grant, paper and SEC changes)	Daily scan; 13 fields incl. status, enrollment, primary endpoints, interventions, results, site counts, completion dates; changes marked Stopped/Notable/Minor
Delivery	CLI, MCP server for AI agents, RSS/JSON Feed files, Apify actor	Morning email digest + dashboard inbox
Watch limits	None when self-hosted	Free: 1 sponsor + 1 disease watchlist + 1 saved search; Pro: 10 of each
Scheduling	You run it (cron, Apify schedule)	Hosted, daily
Setup	Python install	"2 minutes" (their claim)

Pick DataLookout for a hosted, emailed, ClinicalTrials.gov-only digest. Pick BioCatalystFeed if you want several sources per company or ticker, agent/MCP access, or to self-host.

Search filters (v0.2.1)

• --exclude takes words or phrases (space- or comma-separated); matching is whole-word and case-insensitive, and a trailing * is a prefix wildcard (--exclude "murin*" rat).
• --rank scores title hits 3 and other-field hits 1 (simple plurals tolerated), +1 for exact multi-word phrases in the title and +2 when every query term matches; ties break by newest date. The score is in relevance.

Data sources, limits and etiquette

Built-in throttles follow each source's published policy (e.g. NIH RePORTER 1 req/s, NCBI ≤3 req/s without key, SEC ≤10 req/s with a declared User-Agent, openFDA 1,000 req/day per IP without key). We store metadata and links only for papers/preprints, never abstracts. Change detection only covers your own runs; there's no historical backfill. PDUFA dates are regex extractions from 8-K text, not a calendar. Attributions are in NOTICE. Design notes and per-source terms are in docs/DEVELOPER-NOTES.md.

Hosted tier

A paid hosted version (scheduled watches, persisted history, hosted MCP) is planned. Draft terms: TERMS.md, PRIVACY.md (drafts, not legal advice, not in effect).

Contributing & licence

See CONTRIBUTING.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and SECURITY.md (report vulnerabilities privately). Licensed under the Apache License 2.0. BioCatalystFeed is independent and not endorsed by NLM, NIH, FDA, SEC, EMBL-EBI/Europe PMC, or bioRxiv/medRxiv.