dMXP: A De Novo Small-Molecule 3D Structure Predictor with Graph Attention Networks

J Chem Inf Model. 2024 May 13;64(9):3744-3755. doi: 10.1021/acs.jcim.4c00391. Epub 2024 Apr 25.

Abstract

Generating the three-dimensional (3D) structure of small molecules is crucial in both structure- and ligand-based drug design. Structure-based drug design needs bioactive conformations of compounds for lead identification and optimization. Ligand-based drug design techniques, such as 3D shape similarity search, 3D pharmacophore model, 3D-QSAR, etc., all require high-quality small-molecule ligand conformations to obtain reliable results. Although predicting a small molecular bioactive conformer requires information from the receptor, a crystal structure of the molecule is a proper approximation to its bioactive conformer in a specific receptor because the binding pose of a small molecule in its receptor's binding pockets should be energetically close to the crystal structures. This study presents a de novo small molecular structure predictor (dMXP) with graph attention networks based on crystal data derived from the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) combined with molecular electrostatic information calculated by density-functional theory (DFT). Two featuring strategies (topological and atomic partial change features) were employed to explore the relation between these features and the 3D crystal structure of a small molecule. These features were then assembled to construct the holistic 3D crystal structure of a molecule. Molecular graphs were encoded using a graph attention mechanism to deal with the issues of the inconsistencies of local substructures contributing to the entire molecular structure. The root-mean-square deviation (RMSDs) of approximately 80% dMXP predicted structures and the native binding poses within receptors are less than 2.0 Å.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Drug Design
  • Ligands
  • Models, Molecular*
  • Molecular Conformation*
  • Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship
  • Small Molecule Libraries / chemistry
  • Static Electricity

Substances

  • Small Molecule Libraries
  • Ligands