Toward Routine CSP of Pharmaceuticals: A Fully Automated Protocol Using Neural Network Potentials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fully automated, neural network-based CSP protocol for pharmaceuticals that significantly reduces computational costs and manual effort, enabling routine use in drug development.

Contribution

The paper presents Lavo-NN, a novel neural network potential integrated into a scalable cloud workflow for high-throughput, automated pharmaceutical crystal structure prediction.

Findings

Successfully generated all 110 experimental polymorphs in benchmark

Reduced CSP computational time to approximately 8.4k CPU hours

Demonstrated practical utility through case studies and blind challenges

Abstract

Crystal structure prediction (CSP) is a useful tool in pharmaceutical development for identifying and assessing risks associated with polymorphism, yet widespread adoption has been hindered by high computational costs and the need for both manual specification and expert knowledge to achieve useful results. Here, we introduce a fully automated, high-throughput CSP protocol designed to overcome these barriers. The protocol's efficiency is driven by Lavo-NN, a novel neural network potential (NNP) architected and trained specifically for pharmaceutical crystal structure generation and ranking. This NNP-driven crystal generation phase is integrated into a scalable cloud-based workflow. We validate this CSP protocol on an extensive retrospective benchmark of 49 unique molecules, almost all of which are drug-like, successfully generating structures that match all 110 $Z' = 1$ experimental polymorphs. The average CSP in this benchmark is performed with approximately 8.4k CPU hours, which is a significant reduction compared to other protocols. The practical utility of the protocol is further demonstrated through case studies that resolve ambiguities in experimental data and a semi-blinded challenge that successfully identifies and ranks polymorphs of three modern drugs from powder X-ray diffraction patterns alone. By significantly reducing the required time and cost, the protocol enables CSP to be routinely deployed earlier in the drug discovery pipeline, such as during lead optimization. Rapid turnaround times and high throughput also enable CSP that can be run in parallel with experimental screening, providing chemists with real-time insights to guide their work in the lab.