skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Molecular Design: A Perspective

Journal Article · · Molecules

Domain-aware artificial intelligence has been increasingly adopted in recent years to expedite molecular design in various applications, including drug design and discovery. Recent advances in areas such as physics-informed machine learning and reasoning, software engineering, high-end hardware development, and computing infrastructures are providing opportunities to build scalable and explainable AI molecular discovery systems. This could improve a design hypothesis through feedback analysis, data integration that can provide a basis for the introduction of end-to-end automation for compound discovery and optimization, and enable more intelligent searches of chemical space. Several state-of-the-art ML architectures are predominantly and independently used for predicting the properties of small molecules, their high throughput synthesis, and screening, iteratively identifying and optimizing lead therapeutic candidates. However, such deep learning and ML approaches also raise considerable conceptual, technical, scalability, and end-to-end error quantification challenges, as well as skepticism about the current AI hype to build automated tools. To this end, synergistically and intelligently using these individual components along with robust quantum physics-based molecular representation and data generation tools in a closed-loop holds enormous promise for accelerated therapeutic design to critically analyze the opportunities and challenges for their more widespread application. This article aims to identify the most recent technology and breakthrough achieved by each of the components and discusses how such autonomous AI and ML workflows can be integrated to radically accelerate the protein target or disease model-based probe design that can be iteratively validated experimentally. Taken together, this could significantly reduce the timeline for end-to-end therapeutic discovery and optimization upon the arrival of any novel zoonotic transmission event. Our article serves as a guide for medicinal, computational chemistry and biology, analytical chemistry, and the ML community to practice autonomous molecular design in precision medicine and drug discovery.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
Grant/Contract Number:
NVBL; AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1829517
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1833355
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-159775; MOLEFW; PII: molecules26226761
Journal Information:
Molecules, Journal Name: Molecules Vol. 26 Journal Issue: 22; ISSN 1420-3049
Publisher:
MDPI AGCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
Switzerland
Language:
English

References (101)

Protein–Ligand Scoring with Convolutional Neural Networks journal April 2017
MoleculeNet: a benchmark for molecular machine learning journal January 2018
Quantum Mechanical Methods Predict Accurate Thermodynamics of Biochemical Reactions journal March 2021
Towards a Universal SMILES representation - A standard method to generate canonical SMILES based on the InChI journal September 2012
Idea2Data: Toward a New Paradigm for Drug Discovery journal February 2019
ScaffoldGraph: an open-source library for the generation and analysis of molecular scaffold networks and scaffold trees journal March 2020
Virtual discovery of melatonin receptor ligands to modulate circadian rhythms journal February 2020
Collision Cross Sections for Structural Proteomics journal April 2015
Computational methods in drug discovery journal January 2016
The ModelSEED Biochemistry Database for the integration of metabolic annotations and the reconstruction, comparison and analysis of metabolic models for plants, fungi and microbes journal September 2020
Machine Learning Predictions of Molecular Properties: Accurate Many-Body Potentials and Nonlocality in Chemical Space journal June 2015
DeepSMILES: An Adaptation of SMILES for Use in Machine-Learning of Chemical Structures preprint September 2018
Deep learning enables rapid identification of potent DDR1 kinase inhibitors journal September 2019
Machine Learning Techniques and Drug Design journal September 2012
InChI - the worldwide chemical structure identifier standard journal January 2013
Prediction Errors of Molecular Machine Learning Models Lower than Hybrid DFT Error journal October 2017
Development and evaluation of a deep learning model for protein–ligand binding affinity prediction journal May 2018
Ultra-large library docking for discovering new chemotypes journal February 2019
The Electrolyte Genome project: A big data approach in battery materials discovery journal June 2015
BRADSHAW: a system for automated molecular design journal October 2019
Envisioning the Future: Medicine in the Year 2050 journal June 2012
Current and Future Roles of Artificial Intelligence in Medicinal Chemistry Synthesis journal April 2020
SMILES-based deep generative scaffold decorator for de-novo drug design journal May 2020
SchNet – A deep learning architecture for molecules and materials journal June 2018
Chemical process optimization by computer — a self-directed chemical synthesis system journal December 1978
DeepScaffold: A Comprehensive Tool for Scaffold-Based De Novo Drug Discovery Using Deep Learning journal December 2019
OrbNet: Deep learning for quantum chemistry using symmetry-adapted atomic-orbital features journal September 2020
Molecular de-novo design through deep reinforcement learning journal September 2017
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Multiparameter Optimization in de novo Drug Design journal June 2019
Bayer’s in silico ADMET platform: a journey of machine learning over the past two decades journal September 2020
Automatic Chemical Design Using a Data-Driven Continuous Representation of Molecules journal January 2018
DeepAffinity: interpretable deep learning of compound–protein affinity through unified recurrent and convolutional neural networks journal February 2019
Properties of a genetic algorithm equipped with a dynamic penalty function journal March 2009
Self-Consistent Equations Including Exchange and Correlation Effects journal November 1965
Molecular graph convolutions: moving beyond fingerprints journal August 2016
Fast and Accurate Modeling of Molecular Atomization Energies with Machine Learning journal January 2012
A remote-controlled adaptive medchem lab: an innovative approach to enable drug discovery in the 21st Century journal September 2013
Self-referencing embedded strings (SELFIES): A 100% robust molecular string representation journal November 2020
Machine Learning in Drug Discovery and Development Part 1: A Primer journal March 2020
Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry: New estimates of R&D costs journal May 2016
Benchmarking graph neural networks for materials chemistry journal June 2021
Quantum machine learning journal November 2018
Reinforced Adversarial Neural Computer for de Novo Molecular Design journal May 2018
Ranking Chemical Structures for Drug Discovery: A New Machine Learning Approach journal April 2010
Inverse design in search of materials with target functionalities journal March 2018
Argumentative Comparative Analysis of Machine Learning on Coronary Artery Disease journal January 2020
Computational Design and Selection of Optimal Organic Photovoltaic Materials journal July 2011
Enumeration of 166 Billion Organic Small Molecules in the Chemical Universe Database GDB-17 journal November 2012
Machine learning for target discovery in drug development journal June 2020
Automation of Synthesis in Medicinal Chemistry: Progress and Challenges journal July 2020
druGAN: An Advanced Generative Adversarial Autoencoder Model for de Novo Generation of New Molecules with Desired Molecular Properties in Silico journal May 2017
A high-throughput infrastructure for density functional theory calculations journal June 2011
Applications of Machine Learning in Drug Target Discovery journal December 2020
Inverse Strategies for Molecular Design journal January 1996
Identification of metabolites from tandem mass spectra with a machine learning approach utilizing structural features journal October 2019
International chemical identifier for chemical reactions journal March 2013
Quantum-chemical insights from deep tensor neural networks journal January 2017
PubChem Substance and Compound databases journal September 2015
Machine-learned and codified synthesis parameters of oxide materials journal September 2017
Predicting Drug–Target Interaction Using a Novel Graph Neural Network with 3D Structure-Embedded Graph Representation journal August 2019
Quantum autoencoders for efficient compression of quantum data journal August 2017
Machine learning in chemoinformatics and drug discovery journal August 2018
Information Retrieval and Text Mining Technologies for Chemistry journal May 2017
De novo generation of hit-like molecules from gene expression signatures using artificial intelligence journal January 2020
When do short-range atomistic machine-learning models fall short? journal January 2021
Deep reinforcement learning for de novo drug design journal July 2018
Message-passing neural networks for high-throughput polymer screening journal June 2019
Text-mined dataset of inorganic materials synthesis recipes journal October 2019
Designing compact training sets for data-driven molecular property prediction through optimal exploitation and exploration journal January 2019
Estimation of the size of drug-like chemical space based on GDB-17 data journal August 2013
Creating a Virtual Assistant for Medicinal Chemistry journal June 2019
Deep Docking: A Deep Learning Platform for Augmentation of Structure Based Drug Discovery journal May 2020
Applying machine learning techniques to predict the properties of energetic materials journal June 2018
Scaffold-based molecular design with a graph generative model journal January 2020
Graph Networks as a Universal Machine Learning Framework for Molecules and Crystals journal April 2019
SchNetPack: A Deep Learning Toolbox For Atomistic Systems journal November 2018
Quantum Chemistry in the Age of Machine Learning journal March 2020
Stochastic Voyages into Uncharted Chemical Space Produce a Representative Library of All Possible Drug-Like Compounds journal May 2013
A Deep-Learning View of Chemical Space Designed to Facilitate Drug Discovery journal July 2020
AMPL: A Data-Driven Modeling Pipeline for Drug Discovery journal April 2020
Algorithm for Advanced Canonical Coding of Planar Chemical Structures That Considers Stereochemical and Symmetric Information journal July 2007
Learning a Local-Variable Model of Aromatic and Conjugated Systems journal December 2017
Strategy To Discover Diverse Optimal Molecules in the Small Molecule Universe journal February 2015
Analyzing Learned Molecular Representations for Property Prediction journal July 2019
K DEEP : Protein–Ligand Absolute Binding Affinity Prediction via 3D-Convolutional Neural Networks journal January 2018
Improving Protein-Ligand Docking Results with High-Throughput Molecular Dynamics Simulations journal March 2020
Deep Model Based Transfer and Multi-Task Learning for Biological Image Analysis journal June 2020
Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (dcGAN) Models for Screening and Design of Small Molecules Targeting Cannabinoid Receptors journal October 2019
Inhomogeneous Electron Gas journal November 1964
Quantum chemical accuracy from density functional approximations via machine learning journal October 2020
MONN: A Multi-objective Neural Network for Predicting Compound-Protein Interactions and Affinities journal April 2020
Text mining for precision medicine: automating disease-mutation relationship extraction from biomedical literature journal April 2016
SMILES, a chemical language and information system. 1. Introduction to methodology and encoding rules journal February 1988
Defining and Exploring Chemical Spaces journal February 2021
Communication: Understanding molecular representations in machine learning: The role of uniqueness and target similarity journal October 2016
How to improve R&D productivity: the pharmaceutical industry's grand challenge journal February 2010
Deep learning in neural networks: An overview journal January 2015
Quantum chemistry structures and properties of 134 kilo molecules journal August 2014
Active learning strategies with COMBINE analysis: new tricks for an old dog journal December 2018
Off-Line Quality Control, Parameter Design, and the Taguchi Method journal October 1985
3D-Scaffold: A Deep Learning Framework to Generate 3D Coordinates of Drug-like Molecules with Desired Scaffolds journal October 2021