Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39922899›Full record

ArticleCommunications chemistry2025

Narrowing the gap between machine learning scoring functions and free energy perturbation using augmented data.

Ísak Valsson, Matthew T Warren, Charlotte M Deane, Aniket Magarkar, Garrett M Morris, Philip C Biggin

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Communications chemistry, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
18citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

18 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Review
  3. Bridging between Structure-Based and Data-Driven Affinity Prediction.Journal of chemical information and modeling · 2026
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Review
  9. Review
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. A generalizable deep learning framework for structure-based protein-ligand affinity ranking.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  15. Review
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Ísak Valsson *Oxford Protein Informatics Group, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0009-0004-1309-1076
Matthew T Warren *Structural Bioinformatics and Computational Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5860-7468
Charlotte M DeaneOxford Protein Informatics Group, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1388-2252
Aniket MagarkarBoehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Biberach an de Riß, Germany. aniket.magarkar@boehringer-ingelheim.com.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3385-964X
Garrett M MorrisOxford Protein Informatics Group, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. garrett.morris@stats.ox.ac.uk.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1731-8405
Philip C BigginStructural Bioinformatics and Computational Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. philip.biggin@bioch.ox.ac.uk.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5100-8836

Funding

Boehringer Ingelheim N/ARCUK | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) EP/S024093/1
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Machine learning offers great promise for fast and accurate binding affinity predictions. However, current models lack robust evaluation and fail on tasks encountered in (hit-to-) lead optimisation, such as ranking the binding affinity of a congeneric series of ligands, thereby limiting their application in drug discovery. Here, we address these issues by first introducing a novel attention-based graph neural network model called AEV-PLIG (atomic environment vector-protein ligand interaction graph). Second, we introduce a new and more realistic out-of-distribution test set called the OOD Test. We benchmark our model on this set, CASF-2016, and a test set used for free energy perturbation (FEP) calculations, that not only highlights the competitive performance of AEV-PLIG, but provides a realistic assessment of machine learning models with rigorous physics-based approaches. Moreover, we demonstrate how leveraging augmented data (generated using template-based modelling or molecular docking) can significantly improve binding affinity prediction correlation and ranking on the FEP benchmark (weighted mean PCC and Kendall's τ increases from 0.41 and 0.26 to 0.59 and 0.42). These strategies together are closing the performance gap with FEP calculations (FEP+ achieves weighted mean PCC and Kendall's τ of 0.68 and 0.49 on the FEP benchmark) while being  ~400,000 times faster.

Identifiers

PMID39922899
PMCPMC11807228

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.