arXiv Machine Learning

Inference-Time Steering Across Scaffolds and Epitopes for Sample-Efficient De Novo Nanobody Design

The paper introduces dynamic inference-time steering methods for de novo nanobody design, addressing the inefficiency of fixed-condition generative models. Two new budget allocation strategies are proposed: a joint Global Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) approach that steers and allocates compute across multiple scaffold and epitope configurations simultaneously, and a decoupled Batched Successive Elimination (BaSE) method that adapts resource allocation during inference. Experiments show that these dynamic allocators boost the yield of designable candidates per GPU-hour by nearly fivefold while maintaining diversity across therapeutic targets and generative settings.

arXiv AI
Aug 19

Leveraging generative hallucination and biophysics-informed modeling for unified biomolecular sequence-structure co-design

The paper introduces MCTH (Monte Carlo Tree Hallucination), an inference-only framework that performs all‑atom biomolecular sequence‑structure co‑design by treating pretrained folding and inverse‑folding models as black‑box operators. MCTH uses Monte Carlo Tree Search to allocate a fixed inference budget across competing design trajectories, incorporating model confidence, uncertainty, and cross‑expert consensus. Experiments across protein‑RNA, protein‑DNA, protein‑protein, and protein‑ligand design show that adaptive search outperforms simpler sampling strategies, and evaluations with AlphaFold3 and Chai‑1 demonstrate transferability beyond the search‑time oracle.

By Xuefeng Liu, Mingxuan Cao, Xiao Luo, Songhao Jiang, Tobin Sosnick, Jinbo Xu, Louis Maher, Rick Stevens
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 7

On the Design Space of Discrete Diffusion Online Adaptation for Molecular Optimization

arXiv:2607. 02834v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Molecular optimization often starts from a pretrained generative model that captures a broad prior over valid molecular structures.

By Trevor Chen, Ariel Dai, Jason Yang, Riccardo De Santi, Daniel Khalil, Wenda Chu, Nate Gruver, Pranav Murugan, Alexander F. G. Goldberg, Maruan Al-Shedivat, Yisong Yue
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 15

Ensemble-Conditioned Molecular Design

The paper proposes a new framework called ensemble-conditioned guidance that reframes molecular design as an optimisation over both the modes and properties of a molecule’s conformational ensemble. It allows 3D generative models to be conditioned simultaneously on multiple axes—such as shapes, pharmacophore profiles, or protein pockets—by adaptively combining vector fields from each condition. The authors introduce adaptive symmetry learning for composable conditions across reference frames, extend the framework to support flexible-size generation, and demonstrate its effectiveness on new benchmarks and practical drug‑discovery tasks, showing improved outcomes when conditioning on additional states compared to single‑state approaches.

By Ross Irwin, Alessandro Tibo, Jon Paul Janet, Simon Olsson
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 26

Target-Aware Bandit Allocation for Scalable Surrogate Optimization in Chemical Space

arXiv:2606. 26657v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Identifying high-utility candidates from massive discrete spaces under expensive evaluations is a recurring challenge across the sciences, with structure-based drug discovery as a prominent example.

By Mohammad Haddadnia, Yuvan Chali, Abhilash Jayaraj, Constance Kraay, Joana Reis, Felix Strieth-Kalthoff, Haribabu Arthanari
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 18

Search at the Cost of Sampling: Nearly-Instant Latent Space Bayesian Optimization

The paper introduces a new Bayesian optimization approach tailored for generative models used in de novo discovery pipelines. By employing a linear surrogate model constrained to a spherical domain—where high‑dimensional latent vectors naturally concentrate—the authors derive nearly closed‑form solutions for both surrogate modeling and acquisition, achieving at least a 100‑fold speedup over existing methods. This acceleration enables Bayesian optimization to be used as a practical drop‑in component in pipelines that previously found it too slow to consider.

By Donney Fan, Colin Doumont, Aleksandra Kalisz, Paul Duckworth, Jacob R. Gardner, Henry Moss, Geoff Pleiss
arXiv AI
Sep 7

NEAT-POCKET: Pocket-Conditioned Autoregressive 3D Molecular Generation with a Neighborhood-Guided Set Transformer

NEAT-POCKET is a pocket‑conditioned extension of the autoregressive NEAT model that generates 3D molecules atom by atom within protein binding pockets, maintaining atom permutation invariance and explicitly modeling hydrogen atoms. It outperforms existing baselines on the CrossDocked and SPINDR datasets, achieving competitive structure‑based generation performance while sampling significantly faster. The model also supports pocket‑conditioned fragment completion, a capability directly useful for lead optimization and scaffold elaboration in drug design.

By Roxane Axel Jacob, Daniel Rose, Thierry Langer, Johannes Kirchmair