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Molecular graph convolutions: moving beyond fingerprints

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Abstract

Molecular “fingerprints” encoding structural information are the workhorse of cheminformatics and machine learning in drug discovery applications. However, fingerprint representations necessarily emphasize particular aspects of the molecular structure while ignoring others, rather than allowing the model to make data-driven decisions. We describe molecular graph convolutions, a machine learning architecture for learning from undirected graphs, specifically small molecules. Graph convolutions use a simple encoding of the molecular graph—atoms, bonds, distances, etc.—which allows the model to take greater advantage of information in the graph structure. Although graph convolutions do not outperform all fingerprint-based methods, they (along with other graph-based methods) represent a new paradigm in ligand-based virtual screening with exciting opportunities for future improvement.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Bharath Ramsundar, Brian Goldman, and Robert McGibbon for helpful discussion. We also acknowledge Manjunath Kudlur, Derek Murray, and Rajat Monga for assistance with TensorFlow. S.K. was supported by internships at Google Inc. and Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. Additionally, we acknowledge use of the Stanford BioX3 cluster supported by NIH S10 Shared Instrumentation Grant 1S10RR02664701. S.K. and V.P. also acknowledge support from from NIH 5U19AI109662-02.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford University, 318 Campus Dr. S296, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Steven Kearnes & Vijay Pande

  2. Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA

    Kevin McCloskey, Marc Berndl & Patrick Riley

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  1. Steven Kearnes
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  2. Kevin McCloskey
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Correspondence to Steven Kearnes.

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Kearnes, S., McCloskey, K., Berndl, M. et al. Molecular graph convolutions: moving beyond fingerprints. J Comput Aided Mol Des 30, 595–608 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10822-016-9938-8

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