Rhizome OS-1: Rhizome's Semi-Autonomous Operating System for Small Molecule Drug Discovery

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wang, Yiwen, Sinenka, Gregory, Brace, Xhuliano
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918439307706368
author Wang, Yiwen
Sinenka, Gregory
Brace, Xhuliano
author_facet Wang, Yiwen
Sinenka, Gregory
Brace, Xhuliano
contents We present Rhizome OS-1, a semi-autonomous operating system for small molecule drug discovery in which multi-modal AI agents operate as a full multidisciplinary discovery team. These agents function as computational chemists, medicinal chemists, and patent agents: they write and execute analysis code (fingerprint clustering, R-group decomposition, substructure search), visually triage molecular grids using vision capabilities, formulate explicit medicinal chemistry hypotheses across three strategy tiers, assess patent freedom-to-operate, and dynamically adapt generation strategies based on empirical screening feedback. Powered by r1 - a 246M-parameter graph diffusion model trained on 800 million molecular graphs - the system generates novel chemical matter directly on molecular graphs using fragment masking, scaffold decoration, linker design, and graph editing primitives. In two oncology campaigns (BCL6 BTB domain and EZH2 SET domain), the agent team executed 26 seeds and produced 5,231 novel molecules. Across both targets, 91.9% of generated Murcko scaffolds are absent from ChEMBL, with median Tanimoto similarity of 0.56-0.69 to the nearest known active. Boltz-2 binding affinity predictions, calibrated against ChEMBL data, achieved Spearman correlations of -0.53 to -0.64 and ROC AUC values of 0.88-0.93. These results demonstrate that semi-autonomous agent systems, equipped with graph-native generative tools and physics-informed scoring, enable a new paradigm for early-stage drug discovery: scaled, rapid, and adaptive inverse design with embedded medicinal chemistry reasoning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_07512
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rhizome OS-1: Rhizome's Semi-Autonomous Operating System for Small Molecule Drug Discovery
Wang, Yiwen
Sinenka, Gregory
Brace, Xhuliano
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
We present Rhizome OS-1, a semi-autonomous operating system for small molecule drug discovery in which multi-modal AI agents operate as a full multidisciplinary discovery team. These agents function as computational chemists, medicinal chemists, and patent agents: they write and execute analysis code (fingerprint clustering, R-group decomposition, substructure search), visually triage molecular grids using vision capabilities, formulate explicit medicinal chemistry hypotheses across three strategy tiers, assess patent freedom-to-operate, and dynamically adapt generation strategies based on empirical screening feedback. Powered by r1 - a 246M-parameter graph diffusion model trained on 800 million molecular graphs - the system generates novel chemical matter directly on molecular graphs using fragment masking, scaffold decoration, linker design, and graph editing primitives. In two oncology campaigns (BCL6 BTB domain and EZH2 SET domain), the agent team executed 26 seeds and produced 5,231 novel molecules. Across both targets, 91.9% of generated Murcko scaffolds are absent from ChEMBL, with median Tanimoto similarity of 0.56-0.69 to the nearest known active. Boltz-2 binding affinity predictions, calibrated against ChEMBL data, achieved Spearman correlations of -0.53 to -0.64 and ROC AUC values of 0.88-0.93. These results demonstrate that semi-autonomous agent systems, equipped with graph-native generative tools and physics-informed scoring, enable a new paradigm for early-stage drug discovery: scaled, rapid, and adaptive inverse design with embedded medicinal chemistry reasoning.
title Rhizome OS-1: Rhizome's Semi-Autonomous Operating System for Small Molecule Drug Discovery
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07512