arXiv:2601.22382cs.LG2026-01

用智能体驱动语言模型优化生物设计,提升效率与实际疗效。

Purely Agent-Driven Black-Box Optimization for Biological Design

  • 构建多级智能体系统,通过语言模型生成并迭代优化生物分子。
  • 在分子与抗菌肽设计任务中超越现有方法,样本效率和最终效果显著提升。
  • 支持语义描述、知识检索与复杂约束,适合真实药物研发场景。

生物设计中的关键挑战——如小分子药物发现、抗菌肽开发和蛋白质工程——可建模为在巨大而复杂的结构空间中的黑箱优化问题。现有方法主要依赖原始结构数据,难以利用丰富的科学文献。尽管大型语言模型(LLMs)已被引入,但其角色局限于以结构为中心的优化器内部。本文将生物黑箱优化重新定义为基于语言的智能体驱动推理过程,提出纯智能体驱动的黑箱优化框架PABLO。该系统利用预训练于化学与生物学文献的科学型语言模型,生成并持续优化生物候选物。在标准的GuacaMol分子设计和抗菌肽优化任务中,PABLO实现当前最优性能,显著提升样本效率与最终目标值。相比以往整合LLM的方法,PABLO在每轮运行中保持了竞争力的令牌消耗。除性能外,其智能体架构天然支持语义任务描述、检索增强的领域知识与复杂约束。后续体外验证显示,PABLO优化的肽类对耐药病原体具有强活性,凸显其在治疗发现中的实际潜力。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Many key challenges in biological design -- such as small-molecule drug discovery, antimicrobial peptide development, and protein engineering -- can be framed as black-box optimization over vast, complex structured spaces. Existing methods rely mainly on raw structural data and struggle to exploit the rich scientific literature. While large language models (LLMs) have been added to these pipelines, they have been confined to narrow roles within structure-centered optimizers. We instead cast biological black-box optimization as an agent-driven, language-based reasoning process. We introduce Purely Agent-driven BLack-box Optimization (PABLO), a hierarchical agentic system that uses scientific LLMs pretrained on chemistry and biology literature to generate and iteratively refine biological candidates. On both the standard GuacaMol molecular design and antimicrobial peptide optimization tasks, PABLO achieves state-of-the-art performance, substantially improving sample efficiency and final objective values over established baselines. Compared to prior optimization methods that incorporate LLMs, PABLO achieves competitive token usage per run despite relying on LLMs throughout the optimization loop. Beyond raw performance, the agentic formulation offers key advantages for realistic design: it naturally incorporates semantic task descriptions, retrieval-augmented domain knowledge, and complex constraints. In follow-up in vitro validation, PABLO-optimized peptides showed strong activity against drug-resistant pathogens, underscoring the practical potential of PABLO for therapeutic discovery.

生物设计智能体语言模型药物发现

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