CAMBRIDGE, U.K.—Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Inc. has extended an existing software use agreement with Lingumatics Inc., a leader in natural language processing (NLP) for the life science market, to use the biotech company’s NLP-based knowledge discovery platform for text mining across Pfizer’s research and development organization.

 “High-performance text mining is strategically important for any global pharma company, and especially a market leader like Pfizer,” says Giles Day, senior director of Pfizer R&D Informatics. “Our expanded collaboration with Linguamatics underlines our commitment to exploit the value of intelligence from text within our R&D operations.”

Currently, Pfizer researchers use Lingumatics’ I2E platform, an interactive information extraction system, for focused knowledge discovery from large document collections in a variety of R&D applications. According to the expanded agreement, Pfizer will use I2E to discover and extract key facts and relationships from internal and external literature sources to support decision-making within its new Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Linguamatics’ I2E technology combines NLP, search engine capabilities, intuitive reporting and domain knowledge plug-in to enable users to rapidly extract relevant facts and relationships from large document collections. I2E can be run interactively using ad hoc queries developed and refined on-the-fly by the user, with results returned in real-time. Alternatively, validated queries that capture best practice and favorite queries can be saved, shared and re-used. Queries can also be automated and pipelined by running in a batch mode.

I2E features a client-server architecture built using industry-standard Java and C for use by single users, project teams, or in enterprise-wide deployments.

Organizations have full control over source content to be mined, definition of queries and results output.
“The beauty of the system is the combination of flexibility, speed and scalability, unlike other text mining or information extraction systems,” says Phil Hastings, business development director at Linguamatics. Customers in the pharma sector report that I2E is providing at least a 10 times speed-up in getting to relevant information, compared with conventional keyword search-based approaches, and is finding new knowledge not otherwise found.”

“Working closely with companies such as Pfizer helps Linguamatics ensure we’re deploying the right capabilities, and helps customers gain maximum benefit from their Linguamatics deployment. These experiences, and the new questions and challenges faced, obviously also feed into further enhancement and innovation within the products and services we provide to the industry as a whole.”