Explainable machine learning predictions of dual-target compounds reveal characteristic structural features

Abstract Compounds with defined multi-target activity play an increasingly important role in drug discovery. Structural features that might be signatures of such compounds have mostly remained elusive thus far. We have explored the potential of explainable machine learning to uncover structural moti...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Christian Feldmann, Maren Philipps, Jürgen Bajorath
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:
R
Q
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/e417e0653e004604a6e4ace6cc0f33c4
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Abstract Compounds with defined multi-target activity play an increasingly important role in drug discovery. Structural features that might be signatures of such compounds have mostly remained elusive thus far. We have explored the potential of explainable machine learning to uncover structural motifs that are characteristic of dual-target compounds. For a pharmacologically relevant target pair-based test system designed for our study, accurate prediction models were derived and the influence of molecular representation features of test compounds was quantified to explain the predictions. The analysis revealed small numbers of specific features whose presence in dual-target and absence in single-target compounds determined accurate predictions. These features formed coherent substructures in dual-target compounds. From computational analysis of specific feature contributions, structural motifs emerged that were confirmed to be signatures of different dual-target activities. Our findings demonstrate the ability of explainable machine learning to bridge between predictions and intuitive chemical analysis and reveal characteristic substructures of dual-target compounds.