Target Research (ToolUniverse Claude Skill)

A ToolUniverse agent skill that assembles a comprehensive intelligence dossier on a protein target by running nine parallel research paths and grading every finding with an evidence tier.

   
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-target-research/)
Pricing Free / OSS (Apache-2.0); wraps public APIs (Open Targets, UniProt, GTEx, HPA, STRING, ClinVar, gnomAD, ChEMBL, DGIdb)
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-target-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-target-research ~/.claude/skills/

    (replace ~/.claude/skills/ with your agent’s skills directory if you are not using Claude Code/Desktop.)

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

What it does

Runs a report-first, evidence-graded workflow: it first resolves all target identifiers (UniProt accession, Ensembl ID, gene symbol, Entrez ID, ChEMBL target ID, with GPCR detection), then executes nine parallel research paths:

  • Path 0 — Open Targets foundation (baseline across all dimensions)
  • Path 1 — Core identity (names, sequences, subcellular location)
  • Path 2 — Structure and domains (PDB, AlphaFold, InterPro; GPCRdb for GPCRs)
  • Path 3 — Function and pathways (GO, Reactome, KEGG, WikiPathways)
  • Path 4 — Protein interactions (STRING, IntAct, BioGRID, HPA)
  • Path 5 — Expression profiling (GTEx, HPA, single-cell via CELLxGENE)
  • Path 6 — Variants and disease (gnomAD constraints, ClinVar, DisGeNET, CIViC)
  • Path 7 — Druggability and safety (Pharos TDL, BindingDB, DepMap, Open Targets safety)
  • Path 8 — Literature (PubMed, EuropePMC, collision-aware filtering)

It synthesises the results into a 15-section markdown report with T1–T4 evidence grading and a GO/NO-GO recommendation.

Primary use cases: target dossier assembly before program commitment, novelty and safety assessment, competitive-landscape review for a candidate target.

Notes

It is a reasoning layer over ToolUniverse; without the MCP server registered, the tool calls fail. Several paths lean on Open Targets OpenTargets_* tools — if the ToolUniverse Open Targets surface is degraded (see the Open Targets flag), those dimensions may be incomplete. Complementary to the ToolUniverse Drug Target Validation skill, which scores a target GO/NO-GO rather than profiling it. ToolUniverse ships ~68 such skills; other drug-discovery workflows are catalogued separately.

Sources

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