IBM and Pfizer to accelerate immuno-oncology research with Watson for drug discovery

Research-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer and cognitive technology developer Watson Health has announced a collaboration to aid Pfizer’s research in immuno-oncology, a cancer treatment that uses the body’s immune system to combat cancer.

By using IBM Watson, a cognitive system designed to translate and analyse data to help healthcare organisations understand the many factors that affect health, Pfizer aim to accelerate research into the identification for new drug targets, combination therapies for study, and patient selection strategies in immuno-oncology.

Pfizer is one of the first organisations to use Watson for drug discovery and has customised the tool’s natural language processing and other cognitive reasoning technologies.