@pipeworx/mcp-eu-ctis

@pipeworx/eu-ctis

Clinical trials authorised in the EU/EEA under Regulation 536/2014, from the EU Clinical Trials Information System (CTIS) — who is running what, in which member states, for which condition, and at what status.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1864+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• ctis_search_trials(query?, medicine?, condition?, sponsor?, title?, endpoint?, exclude?, status?, phase?, country?, age_group?, region?, gender?, has_results?, rare_disease?, orphan_designation?, low_intervention?, start_from?, start_to?, sort_by?, sort_direction?, page?, limit?) — the full search surface. Answers "which European trials are recruiting for this drug".
• ctis_trial(ct_number) — the full published record for one trial: title, sponsor, products and active substances, conditions, objective, eligibility criteria, endpoints, planned enrolment, per-member-state status and decision dates, and the reported start/recruitment events.
• ctis_trials_for_medicine(medicine, recruiting_only?, country?, limit?) — every EU trial involving a named medicine or active substance, counted by status.
• ctis_recent_authorisations(since?, country?, condition?, sponsor?, phase?, limit?) — trials most recently authorised in the EEA, newest decision first.

Auth

Keyless. No API key, no cookie, and no browser User-Agent is required.

Data sources

• POST https://euclinicaltrials.eu/ctis-public-api/search — the search endpoint, JSON body in and out.
• GET https://euclinicaltrials.eu/ctis-public-api/retrieve/{ctNumber} — one trial's full record.
• Public portal for humans: https://euclinicaltrials.eu/ctis-public/search.

Things worth knowing before you touch this

• A GET on /ctis-public-api/search answers 403. Searching is a POST. The 403 is a method mismatch, not an authorisation wall — which is exactly what it looks like from the outside, and is why this source was written off once already.
• Sibling paths answer 200 with HTML. /ctis-public-api/search/{ctNumber}, /trial/{ctNumber} and /ct/{ctNumber} all return the Angular SPA's index page with a 200. Only /retrieve/{ctNumber} returns JSON. A parser that trusts the status code will parse an HTML shell as data.
• An unknown trial number returns {} with a 200, not a 404. The absence of ctNumber in the body is the only "not found" signal there is.
• Filters are numeric code lists, not text. status, trialPhaseCode, ageGroupCode, msc (member states, as ISO 3166 numeric country codes) and trialRegion all take integers. The vocabularies are in src/index.ts, lifted from the portal's own option lists; the tools accept the human labels and map them.
• The overall status code and the per-country status code share one vocabulary (1 = under evaluation … 12 = cancelled, plus 13–18 used per member state). trialCountries in a search row is "Spain:2" — country name, colon, that country's status code.
• ctStatus means two different things. In a search row it is the numeric code; in a retrieve payload it is a coarser label string ("Authorised") and the numeric lives in ctPublicStatusCode. Both are normalised to a label on the way out.
• Dates differ by endpoint: search rows are DD/MM/YYYY, detail is an ISO timestamp. Everything comes out as an ISO date.
• A full record is large — 220 KB for a 16-country phase III — because every free-text field carries a translation into every concerned language. The detail tool flattens and drops the translations.
• Trials carry their ClinicalTrials.gov number in secondaryIdentifyingNumbers.nctNumber, exposed as nct_number. That is the join key to the clinicaltrials pack for the same study.
• CTIS starts in 2022. Regulation 536/2014 applies from 31 January 2022; trials authorised under the old Directive live in the legacy EU Clinical Trials Register and are not here.
• trialGlobalEnd is an array while a trial is running and an object once it has ended.

Quick Start

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

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

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/eu-ctis/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 1864+ 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/ctis_search_trials \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"medicine":"pembrolizumab","status":["Ongoing, recruiting"],"country":["Germany"],"limit":2}'

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

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-eu-ctis is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/eu-ctis/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

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

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

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 Eu Ctis data" })

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

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT