Drug Research (ToolUniverse Claude Skill)

A ToolUniverse agent skill that assembles a comprehensive, citation-backed drug profile by querying chemistry, target, clinical-trial, safety, pharmacogenomic, and regulatory sources in a fixed research sequence.


Type	Claude Skill (one of ToolUniverse’s pre-built agent skills)
Supplier	Zitnik Lab, Harvard Medical School
Availability	GA — part of the ToolUniverse skills collection (`skills/tooluniverse-drug-research/`)
Pricing	Free / OSS (Apache-2.0); wraps public APIs (PubChem, ChEMBL, DailyMed, PharmGKB, ClinicalTrials.gov, FDA FAERS/Orange Book, PubMed)
Capabilities	Read-only — drives ToolUniverse tool calls; no data writes
Verified	works · 2026-07-20
Security	cleared · 2026-07-20 — provenance matches Zitnik Lab, Apache-2.0, skill dir confirmed, no OSV advisories

How to install

This skill calls ToolUniverse tools, so the ToolUniverse MCP server must be installed first (see the ToolUniverse page). Simplest registration:

claude mcp add --transport stdio tooluniverse -- uvx tooluniverse

Then add the skills:

Claude Code — install the whole skill collection (the skill resolves as tooluniverse-drug-research):
```
npx skills add mims-harvard/ToolUniverse
```

Manual / other agents — copy just this skill directory into your skills folder:

git clone https://github.com/mims-harvard/ToolUniverse
cp -r ToolUniverse/skills/tooluniverse-drug-research ~/.claude/skills/

The skill sets disable-model-invocation: true upstream, so invoke it explicitly (e.g. ask Claude to “use the drug-research skill”) rather than relying on automatic dispatch.

What it does

Enforces a 12-step, report-first research cycle that builds a structured markdown dossier before querying, then fills each section from a primary source with a documented fallback:

Identifier disambiguation — resolve the compound via PubChem → ChEMBL → DailyMed → PharmGKB.
Chemistry & ADMET — physicochemical properties from PubChem; ADMET predictions from the ADMET-AI suite.
Mechanism & targets — FDA mechanism-of-action text validated against ChEMBL bioactivity (pChEMBL ≥ 6.0).
Clinical trials — ClinicalTrials.gov search with phase distribution and outcomes.
Post-marketing safety — FDA FAERS adverse-event patterns cross-referenced with label warnings.
Pharmacogenomics — PharmGKB dosing guidance and annotations.
Regulatory history — FDA Orange Book approval dates, exclusivity, and patents.
Literature synthesis & cross-source validation — PubMed real-world evidence; reconcile conflicting values across databases with inline citations.

Representative ToolUniverse tools called: PubChem_get_CID_by_compound_name, PubChem_get_compound_properties_by_CID, ChEMBL_search_drugs, DailyMed mechanism/clinical-pharmacology lookups, and ClinicalTrials.gov / FAERS / PharmGKB queries.

Primary use cases: due-diligence drug dossiers, competitive-landscape profiling, mechanism-and-safety briefs for a single agent or compound.

Notes

It is a reasoning layer over ToolUniverse; without the MCP server registered, the tool calls fail. The skill is deliberate about provenance — it tracks the source and any fallback for every value and reconciles conflicts rather than averaging them. ToolUniverse ships ~68 such skills; the repurposing, target-validation, and synergy workflows are catalogued separately (Drug Repurposing, Drug Target Validation, Drug Synergy).

Sources

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