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Multi-constraint molecular generation based on conditional transformer, knowledge distillation and reinforcement learning

Nature Machine Intelligence volume 3, pages 914–922 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Machine learning-based generative models can generate novel molecules with desirable physiochemical and pharmacological properties from scratch. Many excellent generative models have been proposed, but multi-objective optimizations in molecular generative tasks are still quite challenging for most existing models. Here we proposed the multi-constraint molecular generation (MCMG) approach that can satisfy multiple constraints by combining conditional transformer and reinforcement learning algorithms through knowledge distillation. A conditional transformer was used to train a molecular generative model by efficiently learning and incorporating the structure–property relations into a biased generative process. A knowledge distillation model was then employed to reduce the model’s complexity so that it can be efficiently fine-tuned by reinforcement learning and enhance the structural diversity of the generated molecules. As demonstrated by a set of comprehensive benchmarks, MCMG is a highly effective approach to traverse large and complex chemical space in search of novel compounds that satisfy multiple property constraints.

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Fig. 1: The architecture of MCMG.
Fig. 2: Illustration of chemical space and results of evaluation setting 1.
Fig. 3: The top differential scaffold results generated by the three model configurations in task 1.

Data availability

The training dataset was obtained from the study reported by Olivecrona et al.26, which selected the data from the ChEMBL51 dataset. The bioactivity dataset includes the experimental bioactivity data for three different protein targets, namely DRD2, JNK3 and GSK3β. The DRD2 dataset was provided by Olivecrona et al.26, which contains 100,000 negative and 7,219 positive compounds. The JNK3 dataset52 contains the inhibition data for 50,000 negative and 2,665 positive compounds, whereas the GSK3β dataset53,54 contains the inhibition data for 50,000 negative and 740 positive compounds. The JNK3 and GSK3β datasets are available from the study of Li and colleagues41.

Code availability

The code used in the study is publicly available from the GitHub repository: https://github.com/jkwang93/MCMG (ref. 64).

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Acknowledgements

We want to thank Z. Liu for insightful discussion on this study. This work was financially supported by National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2016YFA0501701), National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 81773632), Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (grant no. LZ19H300001), Key R&D Program of Zhejiang Province (grant no. 2020C03010), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant no. 2020QNA7003).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Jike Wang, Chang-Yu Hsieh, Mingyang Wang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Innovation Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine of Zhejiang University, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, P. R. China

    Jike Wang, Mingyang Wang, Zhenxing Wu, Dejun Jiang, Xujun Zhang, Bo Yang, Qiaojun He & Tingjun Hou

  2. School of Computer Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, P. R. China

    Jike Wang & Xi Chen

  3. State Key Lab of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, P. R. China

    Jike Wang, Xi Chen & Tingjun Hou

  4. Tencent Quantum Laboratory, Tencent, Shenzhen, P. R. China

    Chang-Yu Hsieh & Benben Liao

  5. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, P. R. China

    Xiaorui Wang

  6. Xiangya School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, P. R. China

    Dongsheng Cao

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Contributions

T.J.H., C.Y.H., D.S.C. and X.C. designed the research study. J.K.W. developed the method and wrote the code. J.K.W., M.Y.W., X.R.W., D.J.J., B.B.L., X.J.Z. B.Y. and Q.J.H. performed the analysis. J.K.W., M.Y.W., T.J.H. and C.Y.H. wrote the paper. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Dongsheng Cao, Xi Chen or Tingjun Hou.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Machine Intelligence thanks J.B. Brown, Jose Jimenez-Luna, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–9, Discussion and Tables 1–6.

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Wang, J., Hsieh, CY., Wang, M. et al. Multi-constraint molecular generation based on conditional transformer, knowledge distillation and reinforcement learning. Nat Mach Intell 3, 914–922 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-021-00403-1

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