Deep research overview
Deep research reconstructs what happened after an FDA decision, question by question, from the FDA's letters and each company's SEC filings. Start here.
Deep research answers the questions that sit between public records: what an FDA letter said, what the company told investors about it, and what happened next. Each answer is assembled from the FDA's own letters and the company's SEC filings, and every quoted passage is matched word for word to its source before it is published.
It comes in two forms:
| Form | Address | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Question webs | ephemerisx.com/research/deep-research/ | One web per company: every question we asked about its record, laid out by period and joined wherever two answers rest on the same passage. Each question opens a full page with its evidence. |
| Ask the Ephemeris Concept preview | ephemerisx.com/ask/ | What asking the FDA and SEC Ephemeris a question will be like: an answer that cites as it goes, a reasoning graph beneath it, and every node clickable back to the passage it rests on. |
Ways in#
The deep research home page has several entrances to the same body of research:
| Entrance | Address | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Companies | /research/deep-research/ | One question web per company after an FDA Complete Response Letter. |
| Cases | /research/deep-research/cases/ | One FDA decision read alongside what other companies have filed about it, up to the next decision that is still open. See Cases. |
| Investigations | /research/deep-research/investigations/ | Every question in the company webs on one page, grouped by company. |
| Cross-investigations | /research/deep-research/cross-investigations/ | Questions no single company's record can answer, followed across several companies. See Connections across cases. |
| How it works | /research/deep-research/how-it-works/ | The research site's own account of its method. The docs version is How deep research is verified. |
What a deep research answer is#
Every answer, in either form, is built the same way:
- A question, not a topic. “What changed between the FDA's first and second letters?” rather than “Replimune”. A question has an answer that can be checked.
- Quoted, not paraphrased. The evidence is the documents' own words, shown in quotation marks with a citation chip: the document, its date and, for an FDA letter, the page.
- Silence is reported, not filled. When a filing does not mention something, the answer says so, and names the words it searched the whole document for.
- Our words are marked as ours. Questions, summaries and connecting sentences are EphemerisX's wording. Everything in quotation marks is the source's.
See How deep research is verified for the checks every answer passes before it is shown.
Who it is for#
- Investors and analysts
- Compare what the FDA wrote with what the company said about it, letter by letter, without reading every 8-K and 10-K in between.
- Sponsors and regulatory teams
- See how the FDA's concerns evolved across resubmissions, meetings and committees, and what other companies were told in similar positions.
- Journalists and researchers
- Start from a cited, checkable account of a regulatory history, and open every passage at its source.
New to the subject?#
Start with How to read a deep research article. It explains who is speaking on each page, reads one article line by line, and links every regulatory, cancer-trial and SEC term to a plain-language entry with the FDA's or the SEC's own definition.
Which one to use#
- To read a company's whole history after an FDA letter, open its question web. See Question webs.
- To read one answer closely and check its evidence, open a question page. See Question pages.
- To see where the product is heading, try the concept preview. See Ask the Ephemeris.
Why it exists#
The FDA tells a company why it will not approve a drug in a Complete Response Letter. The company tells investors in an 8-K, usually within days. The two documents describe the same decision, in different words, for different readers, and they do not always agree. What happens next (a meeting, a resubmission, a second letter, an advisory committee, an approval or a dispute) is spread across a dozen more documents over months or years.
Deep research reads those documents together and asks the questions that only make sense across them. The articles in this section explain the thinking:
- What deep research means: questions as the unit of research, and why every answer has to be traceable.
- Questions between the records: why we start in the gap between the FDA's letters and the SEC filings.
- Connections across cases: questions that only exist between products, companies and decisions.
- Decisions and risk: how a web of answered questions is used.
Related: The SEC Ephemeris · Reading the record · Why a knowledge graph