Exploring chemical space using natural language processing methodologies for drug discovery.

Journal: Drug discovery today
Published Date:

Abstract

Text-based representations of chemicals and proteins can be thought of as unstructured languages codified by humans to describe domain-specific knowledge. Advances in natural language processing (NLP) methodologies in the processing of spoken languages accelerated the application of NLP to elucidate hidden knowledge in textual representations of these biochemical entities and then use it to construct models to predict molecular properties or to design novel molecules. This review outlines the impact made by these advances on drug discovery and aims to further the dialogue between medicinal chemists and computer scientists.

Authors

  • Hakime Öztürk
    Department of Computer Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey.
  • Arzucan Özgür
  • Philippe Schwaller
    Laboratory of Artificial Chemical Intelligence (LIAC) & National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Catalysis, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Lausanne Switzerland.
  • Teodoro Laino
    IBM Research - Zurich, Säumerstrasse 4, CH-8803 Rüschlikon, Switzerland. Electronic address: teo@zurich.ibm.com.
  • Elif Ozkirimli
    Department of Chemical Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey; Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland. Electronic address: elif.ozkirimli@boun.edu.tr.