Lactoferrin is a multi-functional metal-binding glycoprotein that exhibits many biological functions of interest to many researchers
from the fields of clinical medicine, dentistry, pharmacology, veterinary medicine, nutrition and milk science. To date, a
number of academic reports concerning the biological activities of lactoferrin have been published and are easily accessible
through public data repositories. However, as the literature is expanding daily, this presents challenges in understanding
the larger picture of lactoferrin function and mechanisms. In order to overcome the “analysis paralysis” associated with lactoferrin
information, we attempted to apply a text mining method to the accumulated lactoferrin literature. To this end, we used the
information extraction system GENPAC (provided by Nalapro Technologies Inc., Tokyo). This information extraction system uses
natural language processing and text mining technology. This system analyzes the sentences and titles from abstracts stored
in the PubMed database, and can automatically extract binary relations that consist of interactions between genes/proteins,
chemicals and diseases/functions. We expect that such information visualization analysis will be useful in determining novel
relationships among a multitude of lactoferrin functions and mechanisms. We have demonstrated the utilization of this method
to find pathways of lactoferrin participation in neovascularization, Helicobacter pylori attack on gastric mucosa, atopic dermatitis and lipid metabolism.
Keywords Lactoferrin - Text mining - Neovascularization - Angiogenesis -
Helicobacter pylori
- Atopic dermatitis - Lipid metabolism