Antibody structure prediction using interpretable deep learning.
PATTERNS (NEW YORK, N.Y.) 2022;
3:100406. [PMID:
35199061 PMCID:
PMC8848015 DOI:
10.1016/j.patter.2021.100406]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 85] [Impact Index Per Article: 42.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/01/2021] [Revised: 11/03/2021] [Accepted: 11/15/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Therapeutic antibodies make up a rapidly growing segment of the biologics market. However, rational design of antibodies is hindered by reliance on experimental methods for determining antibody structures. Here, we present DeepAb, a deep learning method for predicting accurate antibody FV structures from sequence. We evaluate DeepAb on a set of structurally diverse, therapeutically relevant antibodies and find that our method consistently outperforms the leading alternatives. Previous deep learning methods have operated as “black boxes” and offered few insights into their predictions. By introducing a directly interpretable attention mechanism, we show our network attends to physically important residue pairs (e.g., proximal aromatics and key hydrogen bonding interactions). Finally, we present a novel mutant scoring metric derived from network confidence and show that for a particular antibody, all eight of the top-ranked mutations improve binding affinity. This model will be useful for a broad range of antibody prediction and design tasks.
DeepAb, a deep learning method for antibody structure, is presented
Structures from DeepAb are more accurate than alternatives
Outputs of DeepAb provide interpretable insights into structure predictions
DeepAb predictions should facilitate design of novel antibody therapeutics
Accurate structure models are critical for understanding the properties of potential therapeutic antibodies. Conventional methods for protein structure determination require significant investments of time and resources and may fail. Although greatly improved, methods for general protein structure prediction still cannot consistently provide the accuracy necessary to understand or design antibodies. We present a deep learning method for antibody structure prediction and demonstrate improvement over alternatives on diverse, therapeutically relevant benchmarks. In addition to its improved accuracy, our method reveals interpretable outputs about specific amino acids and residue interactions that should facilitate design of novel therapeutic antibodies.
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