arXiv:2607.19237cs.LG2026-07

用结构预测模型指导新药分子设计,提升靶点结合力与特异性。

DBMol: Design of High-Affinity, Target-Specific Small Molecules through Structure Prediction Models

论文配图:DBMol: Design of High-Affinity, Target-Specific Small Molecules through Structure Prediction Models
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 基于结构预测模型进行梯度优化,迭代改进分子与蛋白口袋的结合
  • 生成分子在Boltz-2评估下展现强结合亲和力与高靶点特异性
  • 无需参考配体监督,仍保持分子多样性,适合新药发现场景

设计能高亲和力结合特定蛋白口袋的小分子是药物发现的核心目标,因小分子构成多数已获批药物。近期结构预测突破(如AlphaFold-3和Boltz-2)实现了生物分子相互作用的精准预测,有望作为下游任务的基础模型。本文提出DBMol,一种由结构预测模型引导的从头小分子设计框架。该框架采用交替优化与投影流程:优化阶段从初始分子出发,利用梯度优化增强其与靶点口袋的相互作用并提升预测结合亲和力;投影阶段通过流匹配模型将优化后的分子图映射为离散且化学有效的分子。实验表明,DBMol有效优化了Boltz-2的亲和力代理指标,并生成了在Boltz-2评估下具有强预测亲和力与特异性的分子。为减少自确认偏差,进一步采用保留集指标(包括基于AF3的评估)进行验证。DBMol显著提升了靶点覆盖度,同时保持分子多样性,即使无参考配体监督,仍具备竞争力。结果支持结构预测模型作为从头分子设计有效优化信号的潜力。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Designing small molecule ligands that bind with high affinity to specific protein pockets is a fundamental goal in drug discovery, as small molecules constitute a major fraction of approved therapeutics. Recent breakthroughs in structure prediction, such as AlphaFold-3 and Boltz-2, enable accurate biomolecular interaction prediction and show promise as foundation models for downstream tasks, including binding affinity prediction. We propose to leverage these models and introduce DBMol, a new structure predictor-guided framework for de novo small molecule design. DBMol formulates an alternating optimization and projection process. In the optimization stage, DBMol starts from an initial molecule and uses gradient-based optimization to improve pocket-specific interactions and predicted binding affinity using a structure prediction model. In the projection stage, a flow-matching model maps the optimized molecular graph to discrete and chemically valid molecules. Experiments show that DBMol effectively optimizes the Boltz-2 affinity proxy and generates molecules with strong predicted affinity and specificity under Boltz-2 evaluation. To reduce self-confirmation bias, we further evaluate generated molecules using held-out metrics, including AF3-based evaluation. DBMol substantially improves pocket coverage while maintaining molecular diversity over unconditional generation, and is competitive under held-out metrics despite the absence of reference-ligand supervision. These results support the promise of structure prediction models as effective optimization signals for de novo molecular design.

分子设计结构预测生成模型药物发现

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