Noel M. O'Boyle

Morgan Thomas, Noel M. O'Boyle, Andreas Bender et al.

De novo molecule generation can suffer from data inefficiency; requiring large amounts of training data or many sampled data points to conduct objective optimization. The latter is a particular disadvantage when combining deep generative models with computationally expensive molecule scoring functions (a.k.a. oracles) commonly used in computer-aided drug design. Recent works have therefore focused on methods to improve sample efficiency in the context of de novo molecule drug design, or to benchmark it. In this work, we discuss and adapt a recent sample efficiency benchmark to better reflect realistic goals also with respect to the quality of chemistry generated, which must always be considered in the context of small-molecule drug design; we then re-evaluate all benchmarked generative models. We find that accounting for molecular weight and LogP with respect to the training data, and the diversity of chemistry proposed, re-orders the ranking of generative models. In addition, we benchmark a recently proposed method to improve sample efficiency (Augmented Hill-Climb) and found it ranked top when considering both the sample efficiency and chemistry of molecules generated. Continual improvements in sample efficiency and chemical desirability enable more routine integration of computationally expensive scoring functions on a more realistic timescale.

Christopher J. Mungall, Adnan Malik, Daniel R. Korn et al.

Accurately classifying chemical structures is essential for cheminformatics and bioinformatics, including tasks such as identifying bioactive compounds of interest, screening molecules for toxicity to humans, finding non-organic compounds with desirable material properties, or organizing large chemical libraries for drug discovery or environmental monitoring. However, manual classification is labor-intensive and difficult to scale to large chemical databases. Existing automated approaches either rely on manually constructed classification rules, or are deep learning methods that lack explainability. This work presents an approach that uses generative artificial intelligence to automatically write chemical classifier programs for classes in the Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) database. These programs can be used for efficient deterministic run-time classification of SMILES structures, with natural language explanations. The programs themselves constitute an explainable computable ontological model of chemical class nomenclature, which we call the ChEBI Chemical Class Program Ontology (C3PO). We validated our approach against the ChEBI database, and compared our results against deep learning models and a naive SMARTS pattern based classifier. C3PO outperforms the naive classifier, but does not reach the performance of state of the art deep learning methods. However, C3PO has a number of strengths that complement deep learning methods, including explainability and reduced data dependence. C3PO can be used alongside deep learning classifiers to provide an explanation of the classification, where both methods agree. The programs can be used as part of the ontology development process, and iteratively refined by expert human curators.