Pfizer Partners With IBM Watson To Advance Cancer Drug Discovery

Immunotherapy is an approach that uses the immune system to fight diseases, unlike chemotherapy, which kills cancer cells. Immunotherapy works on cells in the immune system to combat cancer. Dario Gil, director of symbiotic cognitive systems at IBM Research, holds a remote control wand while giving a demonstration of the IBM Watson immersion room during an event at the company's headquarters in New York Oct. 7, 2014. By partnering with IBM's Watson for Drug Discovery, Pfizer hopes to more quickly analyze and test hypotheses from "massive volumes of disparate data sources" that include more than 30 million sources of laboratory and data reports as well as medical literature. Watson will also be able to combine such a massive database with Pfizer's own proprietary research information.