CytoSolve® Enables Peer-Reviewed Validation of Scalable Interferon Systems Architecture for Autoimmune Disease Research at Pfizer

Partner Description

Pfizer
Pfizer is a global biopharmaceutical leader focused on discovering, developing, and delivering innovative medicines across immunology, inflammation, oncology, and rare diseases. Through its Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI), Pfizer partners with advanced technology platforms to accelerate translational research and de-risk therapeutic discovery

Challenge

Interferons (IFNs) are central regulators of autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus and dermatomyositis, exerting pleiotropic effects across diverse cell types including hematopoietic stem cells and fibroblasts. However, the IFN literature is vast, heterogeneous, and highly context dependent, making it difficult to integrate experimentally derived knowledge into a unified, mechanistic framework.

Conventional experimental and computational approaches lack the scalability and architectural rigor needed to reconcile pathway-level complexity with cell-type specificity, while also meeting the transparency, traceability, and reproducibility standards required for peer-reviewed validation. Pfizer required a modeling architecture capable of preserving biological fidelity, literature provenance, and modular extensibility across disease contexts.

How CytoSolve® Helped

CytoSolve® partnered with Pfizer’s CTI to deploy its computational systems biology platform as a peer-review–validated mechanistic architecture for interferon biology. CytoSolve®’s modular design enabled independent IFN signaling submodels—each derived from rigorously curated, peer-reviewed literature—to be dynamically integrated without forcing simplification into a single monolithic model.

Using this ontology-driven framework, CytoSolve® first constructed and validated an in silico Interferon Regulatory Network by benchmarking model behavior against existing in vitro and in vivo experimental data. The architecture explicitly preserved molecular assumptions, kinetic parameters, and pathway interactions, ensuring transparency and reproducibility suitable for scientific review.

The validated framework was then extended to cell-type–specific implementations, enabling mechanistic simulations of interferon signaling in hematopoietic stem cells and fibroblasts. CytoSolve®’s partitioned systems architecture allowed each cellular context to be evaluated independently while remaining interoperable within a unified systems model—an essential requirement for peer-reviewed systems biology research.

Key Benefits Realized

  • Peer-review–ready systems architecture for large-scale interferon pathway integration.
  • Mechanistic validation of in silico predictions against established wet-lab data.
  • Cell-type–specific interferon modeling in hematopoietic stem cells and fibroblasts.
  • Transparent, literature-anchored computational framework supporting scientific scrutiny.
  • Reusable infrastructure enabling target discovery, biomarker identification, and therapeutic strategy evaluation.

Outcome

By October 2016, CytoSolve® had successfully validated the interferon regulatory network models and completed setup and testing of hematopoietic stem cell–specific simulations, with fibroblast modeling underway and progressing as planned. The resulting peer-validated systems architecture provided Pfizer with a powerful, extensible platform for mechanistic interrogation of interferon-driven autoimmune pathology. This collaboration demonstrated CytoSolve®’s ability to transform fragmented biological knowledge into a coherent, predictive, and peer-review–grade engine for translational research and therapeutic innovation.