Article

Programs & Initiatives

The Future of Pharmacovigilance: Monitoring Medicine and Vaccine Safety Using AI and Other Tech

While many Pfizer colleagues worked to, develop and manufacture a vaccine for COVID-19, one Pfizer team was hard at work monitoring the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine trial. And they did so while also maintaining safety monitoring operations for more than 1,000 other products in the Pfizer portfolio.Pharmacovigilance is the name for the area of science which scientists and medical professionals monitor medicine and vaccine-related safety issues. “Medicine and vaccine safety is one of those...

Science & Innovation

From Math to Medicine: What Are Mathematical Models and How Do They Predict Pharmacology?

It sounds strange, but predicting how medications impact diseases and the body is a lot like forecasting the weather. To understand why, imagine opening a weather app on your smartphone to check the forecast for the upcoming weekend. You see that it’ll be sunny, 72 degrees, with a slight breeze—perfect weather. But how did scientists predict those precise physical conditions so far in the future? The answer: mathematical models. Scientists across disciplines use mathematical models to...

Purpose & Ideals

Three Principles of Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare

Most people already use artificial intelligence (AI) in their daily lives, sometimes without even thinking about it as being AI-driven. Global positioning systems (GPS) are AI-based navigation applications, for instance, that help us find the quickest route between Points A and B and suggest alternate routes when an accident has jammed up traffic. Artificial intelligence speeds up online shopping by remembering our shopping preferences and recommending similar and complementary products. Arti...

Real People

5 Inspiring STEM Women Who are Making Medicine Happen

Numbers don’t lie, so the saying goes. And in the United States, statistics about women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) seem to speak less than impressive volumes of truth. Here are the facts: In 2021, only 24% of people working in the United States held jobs in a STEM field1. And while women made up 50.5% of the total U.S. population2, they accounted for only 35% of people employed in STEM jobs.1 Moreover, out of the 24% of all people who worked in STEM1, 65%...

Science & Innovation

The Next Frontier of Vaccine Innovation

Edward Jenner changed the world when he used cowpox virus to inoculate a young boy against smallpox.1 Less than 200 years later, smallpox was eradicated from the Earth.2 Dozens of vaccines have since been created, leading to dramatic improvements in public health as well as a marked decline in deaths due to diseases such as measles, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus. Imagine what Jenner would say if he knew that at least two vaccines now help prevent cancers!3 Or that the world’s...

Purpose & Ideals

Pfizer’s Institute of Translational Equitable Medicine Addresses Equity in Health Research

When it comes to healthcare, the terms “equitable” and "access" often go hand-in-hand. In order to prevent, treat, and identify diseases that disproportionately impact underserved and minority populations, Pfizer believes that research must be directed to the root causes of healthcare disparities. The recently-launched Institute of Translational Equitable Medicine (ITEM) is intended to do just that: work toward a more equitable future of health care. For Aida Habtezion, M.D., who is Pfizer’s...

Data Doctors: How Biostatisticians Play a Critical Role in Discovering and Developing Medicine

When you think of a statistician, you may picture a math whiz hastily scrawling formulas on a white board in the halls of academia or the trading floors of finance. But statisticians—specifically, biostatisticians—play a critical role in discovering and developing new medicines. “If we want to get the most from the data, analysis, and experiment, more often than not, it requires early partnership between scientists and biostatisticians in the design and analysis plan,” says Vice President...

Purpose & Ideals

How 10 Biopharma Companies are Working Together to Bring Medicines to Patients Faster

In the year since the pandemic struck, the world has watched one of the greatest real-life dramas of all time unfold: the quest for a vaccine. In the past, drug development and clinical trials were of interest to a relatively small group of scientists, regulators and health care professionals. But with the threat of COVID-19 looming large, time has not been a luxury. The race for a vaccine has become a true spectacle, carrying with it the potential to save untold numbers of lives, globally. T...

Is Remote Clinical Trial Monitoring Here to Stay?

By the end of February 2021, just over one year since the novel coronavirus emerged and disrupted our lives, approximately 136 million people worldwide had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.1 Interestingly, the disruption itself fueled the innovation that allowed such rapid development and deployment of the vaccine. Government issued stay-at-home orders, combined with a desire to protect researchers and the public from infectious disease, made it highly challenging to conduct...

An Immune System “GPS” Uncovers Pathways to Treat Diseases

When it comes to understanding the immune system, we’re in the age of a data “traffic jam.” Thanks to advances in gene sequencing technology and decades of research, we’ve amassed a huge trove of information, but utilizing it to drive new insights can be challenging. A collaboration with Israel-based startup CytoReason is allowing Pfizer scientists to harness computational technology that functions as a “GPS” for the immune system. The tools help to unpack these complex data sets so they can...

Vaccines During Pregnancy

Women who get the vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during pregnancy can help protect themselves from some diseases—and they can give their babies some early protection as well. This happens because pregnant women who are vaccinated can pass along some of the antibodies (proteins that fight disease) they get from the vaccines to their babies. These antibodies can give the baby some protection against certain diseases during the first months of life—when...

How a Novel ‘Incubation Sandbox’ Helped Speed Up Data Analysis in Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Trial

As Pfizer scientists raced to develop their COVID-19 vaccine at record-breaking speed these past few months, they turned to an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) tool to help achieve this mission. Normally, when a clinical trial or trial phase ends, it can take more than 30 days for the patient data to be “cleaned up,” so scientists can then analyze the results. This process involves data scientists manually inspecting the data sets to check for coding errors and other inconsistencies...