PubMed Research Digest Pro

Turn your weekly PubMed reading into a structured, ranked digest — in under 3 minutes.

A postdoc, R&D analyst, or clinical researcher who reads PubMed properly spends 3–4 hours per week just to stay current on one narrow topic. This Skill delivers the same signal in under 3 minutes.

Every paper comes back with a 5-part expert summary (Background, Key Findings, Clinical Relevance, Methodology, Limitations) plus an executive synthesis identifying the most impactful papers and any converging or conflicting evidence across the batch.

What makes it different

Unlike keyword-matched newsletters or free PubMed alerts, this Skill ranks papers by a composite score:

The reader sees the papers that matter, not the first 10 that match keywords.

Example output

Query: renal cell carcinoma AND ferroptosis · past 30 days · top 5 · markdown

Executive Summary

This batch reinforces ferroptosis as a therapeutically relevant vulnerability in renal cancer, while emphasizing histology-specific biology. The most impactful study identifies FSP1 as a prominent determinant of chromophobe RCC (ChRCC) biology: FSP1 was substantially upregulated, associated with poorer outcomes, and — together with SLC7A11 — formed a survival-predictive ferroptosis signature across TCGA cancers. Combined with a companion Molecular Cancer review on lipid–ferroptosis crosstalk in ccRCC, the findings suggest that antioxidant defense and lipid composition — not iron availability alone — may determine treatment response. A separate BCL-xL dependency study in ChRCC cautions that ferroptosis should not be assumed to be the dominant actionable death program in every tumor.

Paper 1: Targeting FSP1 to induce ferroptosis in chromophobe RCC

Journal: Oncogene (2025) · PMID: 40914768 · DOI: 10.1038/s41388-025-03562-2

Background: Chromophobe RCC lacks proven therapies for metastatic or unresectable disease and is unusually sensitive to ferroptosis. This study investigates whether ferroptosis suppressor protein 1 (FSP1) represents a therapeutic vulnerability.

Key Findings:

• TCGA analysis: ChRCC has the second-highest FSP1 upregulation among all analyzed cancers; higher FSP1 correlates with poorer outcomes
• FSP1 + SLC7A11 signature predicts survival across all TCGA tumor types
• In ChRCC lines, GPX4 or FSP1 inhibition alone caused little cell death; combined inhibition produced near-complete loss of viability
• In vivo, FSP1 inhibition alone reduced ChRCC tumor growth by 69%

Clinical / Translational Relevance: Identifies FSP1 as a targetable ferroptosis-resistance mechanism in ChRCC, supporting Phase I combination testing with GPX4- or SLC7A11-directed agents.

Methodological Notes: Integrates TCGA survival analyses, Dependency Map / CTD² datasets, ChRCC cell-line perturbations, and in vivo tumor models. Sample sizes, statistical tests, and p-values not fully stated in abstract.

Limitations & Watch: Effect estimates beyond the 69% growth reduction not reported. Clinical efficacy and safety of FSP1 inhibition in patients not evaluated.

Composite score: 0.77

Inputs

Outputs

• Markdown — ready to paste into Notion, Obsidian, Google Docs
• JSON — for downstream automation, dashboards, Slack bots
• Plain text — email-friendly, no formatting

Every paper delivered with verifiable PMID and DOI. No hallucinated citations — the Skill retrieves from NCBI's authoritative index and passes through the actual metadata.

Who it is for

• Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students in oncology, molecular biology, immunology, nephrology, or related biomedical fields
• Biotech and pharma R&D analysts tracking drug-target, mechanism-of-action, or trial-data literature
• Clinical researchers monitoring their subspecialty's latest trial results
• Grant writers needing a rapid, up-to-date literature snapshot for background sections
• Independent researchers and consultants without institutional literature-alert services

Not for: consumer health lookups, patient-facing medical information, general news aggregation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How is this different from PubMed's own email alerts?

PubMed alerts return raw article lists with titles and abstracts. This Skill filters by impact and citation velocity, then produces a structured 5-part expert summary per paper with specific numbers, effect sizes, and flagged methodological gaps — plus a top-line executive synthesis identifying converging and conflicting evidence.

Q: Does it work outside oncology?

Yes. Tested on oncology, immunology, nephrology, hepatology, cardiovascular research, and neuroscience. Any PubMed-indexed topic works.

Q: Are the summaries reliable?

The Skill extracts from PubMed abstracts only and is instructed to say "Not clearly stated in abstract" rather than fabricate. All extractions retain the original PMID and DOI so you can verify. Always read the full paper before citing or making clinical decisions.

Q: What if my query returns zero papers?

The output tells you the query returned zero results and suggests broadening the query, extending days_back, or changing the filter.

Q: How often does the JCR tier data update?

Journal quartiles are Scimago 2024 vintage, refreshed annually.

Q: Can I get a recurring weekly digest?

Yes. Subscribe and save your query — you'll receive a fresh digest on your chosen cadence (weekly, biweekly, or monthly).

Q: Is there a rate limit?

The Skill uses NCBI's rate-limited API (10 requests/second with API key). A single digest of 5 papers typically completes in 30–60 seconds.

Data sources

• PubMed — NCBI E-utilities (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25501/)
• NIH iCite — relative citation ratio (https://icite.od.nih.gov/api)
• Journal quartiles — Scimago Journal Rank 2024

Disclaimer

Content is LLM-summarized from PubMed abstracts. Always verify against the original publication before citing or making clinical decisions. This tool is not medical advice and is not a substitute for professional judgment.

About the publisher

Built by a working biomedical researcher based in Taiwan, with hands-on experience in renal cell carcinoma biology, single-cell transcriptomics (TCGA, GEO), molecular docking, and cross-cohort validation. Daily PubMed workflow of 30–50 papers per week distilled into this Skill so the same signal is available to researchers without the time.