PDCNet: a benchmark and general deep learning framework for activity prediction of peptide-drug conjugates

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Yun, Huang, Jintu, Zhu, Yingying, Wen, Congrui, Pang, Yu, Zhang, Ji-Quan, Wang, Ling
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liu, Yun
Huang, Jintu
Zhu, Yingying
Wen, Congrui
Pang, Yu
Zhang, Ji-Quan
Wang, Ling
author_facet Liu, Yun
Huang, Jintu
Zhu, Yingying
Wen, Congrui
Pang, Yu
Zhang, Ji-Quan
Wang, Ling
contents Peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs) represent a promising therapeutic avenue for human diseases, particularly in cancer treatment. Systematic elucidation of structure-activity relationships (SARs) and accurate prediction of the activity of PDCs are critical for the rational design and optimization of these conjugates. To this end, we carefully design and construct a benchmark PDCs dataset compiled from literature-derived collections and PDCdb database, and then develop PDCNet, the first unified deep learning framework for forecasting the activity of PDCs. The architecture systematically captures the complex factors underlying anticancer decisions of PDCs in real-word scenarios through a multi-level feature fusion framework that collaboratively characterizes and learns the features of peptides, linkers, and payloads. Leveraging a curated PDCs benchmark dataset, comprehensive evaluation results show that PDCNet demonstrates superior predictive capability, with the highest AUC, F1, MCC and BA scores of 0.9213, 0.7656, 0.7071 and 0.8388 for the test set, outperforming eight established traditional machine learning models. Multi-level validations, including 5-fold cross-validation, threshold testing, ablation studies, model interpretability analysis and external independent testing, further confirm the superiority, robustness, and usability of the PDCNet architecture. We anticipate that PDCNet represents a novel paradigm, incorporating both a benchmark dataset and advanced models, which can accelerate the design and discovery of new PDC-based therapeutic agents.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_12821
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PDCNet: a benchmark and general deep learning framework for activity prediction of peptide-drug conjugates
Liu, Yun
Huang, Jintu
Zhu, Yingying
Wen, Congrui
Pang, Yu
Zhang, Ji-Quan
Wang, Ling
Machine Learning
Biomolecules
Peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs) represent a promising therapeutic avenue for human diseases, particularly in cancer treatment. Systematic elucidation of structure-activity relationships (SARs) and accurate prediction of the activity of PDCs are critical for the rational design and optimization of these conjugates. To this end, we carefully design and construct a benchmark PDCs dataset compiled from literature-derived collections and PDCdb database, and then develop PDCNet, the first unified deep learning framework for forecasting the activity of PDCs. The architecture systematically captures the complex factors underlying anticancer decisions of PDCs in real-word scenarios through a multi-level feature fusion framework that collaboratively characterizes and learns the features of peptides, linkers, and payloads. Leveraging a curated PDCs benchmark dataset, comprehensive evaluation results show that PDCNet demonstrates superior predictive capability, with the highest AUC, F1, MCC and BA scores of 0.9213, 0.7656, 0.7071 and 0.8388 for the test set, outperforming eight established traditional machine learning models. Multi-level validations, including 5-fold cross-validation, threshold testing, ablation studies, model interpretability analysis and external independent testing, further confirm the superiority, robustness, and usability of the PDCNet architecture. We anticipate that PDCNet represents a novel paradigm, incorporating both a benchmark dataset and advanced models, which can accelerate the design and discovery of new PDC-based therapeutic agents.
title PDCNet: a benchmark and general deep learning framework for activity prediction of peptide-drug conjugates
topic Machine Learning
Biomolecules
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12821