Molecular Generation
Bar chart comparing RNN and GPT architectures with SMILES and Graph representations on desirability scores

DrugEx v3: Scaffold-Constrained Graph Transformer

DrugEx v3 extends scaffold-constrained drug design by introducing a Graph Transformer with adjacency-matrix-based positional encoding, achieving 100% molecular validity and high predicted affinity for adenosine A2A receptor ligands.

Molecular Generation
Bar chart showing peak absorption wavelength increasing across evolutionary generations

Evolutionary Molecular Design via Deep Learning + GA

An evolutionary molecular design framework that evolves ECFP fingerprint vectors using a genetic algorithm, reconstructs valid SMILES via an RNN decoder, and evaluates fitness with a DNN property predictor.

Molecular Generation
Taxonomy diagram showing four generative model families (VAE, GAN, Diffusion, Flow) connecting to small molecule generation and protein generation subtasks

Generative AI Survey for De Novo Molecule and Protein Design

This survey organizes generative AI for de novo drug design into two themes: small molecule generation (target-agnostic, target-aware, conformation) and protein generation (structure prediction, sequence generation, backbone design, antibody, peptide). It covers four generative model families (VAEs, GANs, diffusion, flow-based), catalogs key datasets and benchmarks, and provides 12 comparative benchmark tables across all subtasks.

Molecular Representations
Bar chart comparing Group SELFIES vs SELFIES on MOSES benchmark metrics

Group SELFIES: Fragment-Based Molecular Strings

Group SELFIES extends SELFIES with group tokens representing functional groups and substructures, maintaining chemical robustness while improving distribution learning and molecular generation quality.

Molecular Generation
Schematic of inverse molecular design paradigm mapping desired properties to molecular structures through generative models

Inverse Molecular Design with ML Generative Models

A foundational review surveying how deep generative models (VAEs, GANs, reinforcement learning) enable inverse molecular design, covering molecular representations, chemical space navigation, and applications from drug discovery to materials engineering.

Molecular Generation
Bar chart showing Lingo3DMol achieves best Vina docking scores on DUD-E compared to five baselines

Lingo3DMol: Language Model for 3D Molecule Design

Lingo3DMol introduces FSMILES, a fragment-based SMILES representation with local and global coordinates, to generate drug-like 3D molecules in protein pockets via a transformer language model.

Molecular Generation
Schematic of Link-INVENT architecture showing encoder-decoder RNN with reinforcement learning scoring loop

Link-INVENT: RL-Driven Molecular Linker Generation

Link-INVENT is an RNN-based generative model for molecular linker design that uses reinforcement learning with a flexible scoring function, demonstrated on fragment linking, scaffold hopping, and PROTAC design.

Molecular Generation
Bar chart showing language model validity rates across XYZ, CIF, and PDB 3D chemical file formats

LMs Generate 3D Molecules from XYZ, CIF, PDB Files

Demonstrates that standard transformer language models, trained with next-token prediction on sequences from XYZ, CIF, and PDB files, can generate valid 3D molecules, crystals, and protein binding sites competitive with domain-specific 3D generative models.

Molecular Generation
Distribution plot showing original QM9 logP shifted toward +6 and -6 targets via gradient-based dreaming

PASITHEA: Gradient-Based Molecular Design via Dreaming

PASITHEA adapts deep dreaming from computer vision to molecular design, directly optimizing SELFIES-encoded molecules for target chemical properties via gradient-based inversion of a trained regression network.

Molecular Generation
Bar chart showing PrefixMol Vina scores across different conditioning modes: target, property, combined, and scaffold

PrefixMol: Prefix Embeddings for Drug Molecule Design

PrefixMol prepends learnable condition vectors to a GPT transformer for SMILES generation, enabling joint control over binding pocket targeting and chemical properties like QED, SA, and LogP.

Molecular Generation
Bar chart comparing docking scores of generated vs known ligands for CDK2 and EGFR targets

Protein-to-Drug Molecule Translation via Transformer

Applies the Transformer architecture to generate drug-like molecules conditioned on protein amino acid sequences, treating target-specific de novo drug design as a sequence-to-sequence translation problem.

Molecular Representations
Bar chart showing randomized SMILES generate more of GDB-13 chemical space than canonical SMILES across training set sizes

Randomized SMILES Improve Molecular Generative Models

An extensive benchmark showing that training RNN generative models with randomized (non-canonical) SMILES strings yields more uniform, complete, and closed molecular output domains than canonical SMILES.