In biotech, the calendar is the thesis. A Phase 3 readout can move a single-product company 50% in either direction overnight. Yet the primary public source for trial timing - ClinicalTrials.gov - is built for researchers and patients, not for anyone trying to answer: "what is coming up for this company, and how much could it matter?"
What counts as a catalyst
Three event types on ClinicalTrials.gov are worth monitoring per sponsor:
- Upcoming readouts: trials whose primary completion date is approaching. A Phase 3 with a completion date next quarter is the classic binary event.
- Posted results: results sections appearing on a registered trial - data is out.
- Phase transitions and status changes: a trial moving to active/completed, or being suspended/terminated (terminations are catalysts too, in the wrong direction).
Impact is not equal across trials. Phase 3 outweighs Phase 1, a lead asset outweighs the fifth indication of an approved drug, and near-term dates outweigh far ones. That is exactly what a scoring layer encodes.
Doing it manually vs as a feed
ClinicalTrials.gov's v2 API is official, free and stable - you can query it yourself. The work is in the interpretation layer: classifying each trial event into catalyst types, weighing phase, status and proximity into a 0-100 impact score, and keeping it monitored daily.
The Biotech Catalyst Monitor does this per sponsor: give it company names and it returns their trials classified and impact-scored, every record linking back to the registry entry. A real example: a Moderna scan surfaced a Phase 3 with an upcoming readout at impact 100 at the top, with 10+ high-impact events behind it. It costs $0.20 per company.
It pairs with the FDA Drug Approval and Action Monitor - the regulatory side of the same story - and the NIH funding monitor as the upstream R&D signal. AI agents can chain all three through the free MCP server: "list upcoming catalysts for these five biotechs, then check their recent FDA actions."
The honest caveats
Completion dates on ClinicalTrials.gov shift frequently - sponsors amend them - so treat dates as estimates, not commitments. Results timing does not always match the registry (companies often press-release first). And forward PDUFA dates are not in any clean public source; anyone selling "PDUFA calendars" is hand-curating. This feed deliberately covers what the official registry actually knows.
Data for research, screening and monitoring - not investment advice. Historical patterns do not guarantee future results.
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