MolPrice: assessing synthetic accessibility of molecules based on market value
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Hastedt, Friedrich
Hellgardt, Klaus
Yaliraki, Sophia
Zhang, Dongda
Del Rio Chanona, Antonio
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Machine learning approaches for conceptualizing and designing in silico compounds have attracted significant attention. However, the applicability of these compounds is often challenged by synthetic viability and cost-effectiveness. Researchers introduced proxy-scores, known as synthethic accessiblity scoring, to quantify the ease of synthesis for virtual molecules. Despite their utility, existing synthetic accessibility tools have notable limitations: they overlook compound purchasability, lack physical interpretability, and often rely on imperfect computer-aided synthesis planning algorithms. We introduce MolPrice, an accurate and fast model for molecular price prediction. Utilizing self-supervised contrastive learning, MolPrice autonomously generates price labels for synthetically complex molecules, enabling the model to generalize to molecules beyond the training distribution. Our results show that MolPrice reliably assigns higher prices to synthetically complex molecules than to readily purchasable ones, effectively distinguishing different levels of synthetic accessibility. Furthermore, MolPrice achieves competitive performance on literature benchmarks for synthetic accessibility. To demonstrate its practical utility, we conduct a virtual screening case study, illustrating how MolPrice successfully identifies purchasable molecules from a large candidate library. MolPrice bridges the gap between generative molecular design and real-world feasibility by integrating cost-awareness into synthetic accessibility assessment, making it a powerful model to accelerate molecular discovery.
Date Issued
2025-09-29
Date Acceptance
2025-08-05
Citation
Journal of Chemoinformatics, 2025, 17
ISSN
1758-2946
Publisher
BMC
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Chemoinformatics
Volume
17
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
150
Date Publish Online
2025-09-29