Inxight Drugs MCP Server

@pipeworx/inxight-drugs

Drug development status by indication from NCATS Inxight Drugs: for any drug or substance, the conditions it is approved for or in trials for, the highest phase reached per condition, its approval history, originator and targets.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1764+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• inxight_substance(name | unii) — one substance by name or FDA UNII: every indication with its highest phase (Approved / Phase III / II / I) and the trial or label URL behind it, the overall highest development event, first approval year, originator, targets with pharmacology and potency, synonyms, and ChEMBL / DrugBank / PubChem / CAS / MeSH / RxCUI ids. Answers "what is psilocybin being developed for, and how far along".
• inxight_search(query, development_status?, limit?, offset?) — free-text substance search; returns UNIIs plus breakdowns of the hits by development status, highest phase and condition.
• inxight_indication(condition, development_status?, limit?, offset?) — substances for a disease, each with the highest phase reached FOR THAT condition. development_status: "Clinical" keeps only investigational drugs. Also returns the related condition labels Inxight uses ("Ischemic stroke", "Acute ischemic stroke") for drilling down.

An unknown drug or condition returns found: false with a reason and a hint; an upstream HTTP error throws.

For mechanism of action and target-disease evidence, use the chembl and opentargets packs — inxight_substance returns the ChEMBL id to hop across. For individual trials, use clinicaltrials.

Auth

Keyless.

Data sources

Inxight Drugs (https://drugs.ncats.io) is run by NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. It is a GSRS deployment that joins the FDA Global Substance Registration System with ClinicalTrials.gov, DrugBank, Drugs@FDA, DailyMed and orphan designations. The site is an Angular app; the JSON API it calls is public but undocumented. Endpoints used, all GET:

• https://drugs.ncats.io/api/v1/substances/search?q=psilocybin&top=10 — search. Exact-name match is q=root_names_name:"^PSILOCYBIN$"; UNII lookup is q=root_approvalID:"2RV7212BP0". Filter with repeated facet=<Facet Name>/<value>, e.g. facet=Condition/Stroke and facet=Development Status/Clinical (facets AND together).
• https://drugs.ncats.io/api/v1/substances/search/@facets?kind=ix.ginas.models.v1.Substance&field=Condition&ffilter=stroke&fetch=25 — the condition labels containing a string, with counts. Facet values are case-sensitive, so inxight_indication resolves the caller's text here first.
• https://drugs.ncats.io/api/v1/substances(<uuid or UNII>)?view=full — names and code cross-references.
• https://drugs.ncats.io/api/v1/substances(<uuid or UNII>)/@additional — the Inxight layer: a flat list of {name, value} records. The ones used are Conditions (per-indication highestPhase + highestPhaseUri), Targets, Stitcher Highest Phase, Highest Development Event, Earliest Approved Event, Approval Year, Originator, Description.

Things worth knowing:

• An unrecognized id in substances(<id>) answers HTTP 500 ("Invalid UUID string"), not 404 — which is why UNII lookup goes through search instead.
• Conditions always carries a placeholder row labelled Unknown; it is dropped.
• Search order is the upstream's, not relevance or phase. inxight_indication re-sorts the page it fetched by phase for the condition.
• Condition phases come from a ClinicalTrials.gov snapshot (the Stitcher Label records say e.g. "ClinicalTrials, February 2021"), so a programme that moved phase recently can read one phase behind. Check clinicaltrials for the latest trial.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "inxight-drugs": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/inxight-drugs/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/inxight-drugs/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1764+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/inxight_substance \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"name":"psilocybin"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/inxight_substance. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "inxight-drugs": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-inxight-drugs"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-inxight-drugs

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Inxight Drugs data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT