The paper introduces MAGI, an open modular agent that orchestrates molecular‑design tools by setting objectives, launching optimization, interpreting structure–activity relationships, and adjusting strategy. In nine retrospective lead‑optimization campaigns from three pharmaceutical companies, MAGI produced valid molecules via either direct LLM generation or delegation to REINVENT 4; LLM proposals stayed closer to local chemistry and achieved comparable or higher activity with fewer operations, while REINVENT explored broader chemical space. The success of a campaign depended on the accuracy of predictive models rather than the generation route, and a blinded evaluation showed chemists could not distinguish MAGI’s outputs from expert‑generated compounds, though the SAR reasoning was deemed plausible yet incomplete. The study positions MAGI as a coordination layer that can be plugged into existing workflows, but notes that the current ceiling for real projects is set by scorer applicability rather than tool orchestration.
arXiv:2608. 07454v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The total synthesis of a complex molecule is among the most demanding intellectual and experimental feats in chemistry: a chemist must plan many steps ahead for how to assemble simple building blocks into an intricate target, devise backup strategies, and anticipate procedural challenges.
arXiv:2610.16975v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Drug discovery remains a resource-intensive and time-consuming process, involving billions of dollars and a decade of development to advance a drug to...
arXiv:2608. 06961v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Early-stage molecular design is an iterative process, not just a task of generating molecules.
arXiv:2606. 19245v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) agents promise to accelerate drug discovery by compressing interpretation and decision-making loops, but practical deployment requires trusted evaluation on realistic program decisions.
arXiv:2608. 11483v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Hit-to-lead optimization requires iterative design of hit analogs across competing potency, selectivity, physicochemical, pharmacokinetic, safety, and synthetic constraints.
arXiv:2511.20510v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Molecule generation from extremely limited training data is a key challenge in drug discovery. Existing fragment-based methods are more suitable th...
MolDesignBench is a new benchmark for evaluating large language model (LLM)-based agents in scenario‑grounded molecular design. It contains 2,000 generation and optimization tasks that blend implicit narrative requirements with explicit property and functional‑group constraints, including infeasible cases, and require the use of 17 specialized chemistry tools. Experiments with leading LLMs show low success rates (best ~43%) and highlight failures in implicit‑constraint reasoning, infeasibility detection, and tool usage, underscoring the benchmark’s role in identifying key bottlenecks for future research.
arXiv:2606. 11256v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Designing molecules with target properties is most useful when candidate structures are accompanied by feasible synthetic routes.
arXiv:2606. 00555v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Structure-based drug design increasingly employs LLM agents to iteratively refine ligands against a target pocket, yet a viable ligand must satisfy two often-conflicting objectives -- binding affinity and druggability -- which single optimization steps rarely improve together.
The paper introduces ChemCost, a benchmark of 1,427 reactions that tests large language models’ ability to estimate chemical procurement costs by grounding identities, retrieving supplier quotes, selecting purchasable packs, normalizing quantities, and computing costs. It includes a frozen pricing snapshot of 2,261 chemicals and 230,775 supplier quotes, and provides scalar scoring plus stage‑level diagnostics for grounding, retrieval, procurement, and arithmetic errors. Experiments show that even advanced LLM agents achieve only about 50.6% accuracy within 25% relative error on clean inputs, and performance drops sharply with realistic noise, highlighting brittleness in parsing, evidence integration, pack selection, and tool use.
The Perspective reviews the rapid growth of agentic AI systems in computational chemistry, noting an increase from a handful in 2024 to about fifty by August 2026. These systems are evolving from assisting with specific tasks to autonomously designing, executing, and analyzing in‑silico experiments, even drafting manuscripts. While fully autonomous AI scientists are not yet realized and human oversight remains, the trend toward commoditized generalist agents suggests a future where specialized systems may become obsolete, prompting reflection on the field’s direction and priorities.
arXiv:2610.23791v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Computational drug discovery requires agents to compose scientific operations and adapt to changing evidence and constraints. Here we introduce DrugHar...