Cited by 49Monoclonal and Polyclonal Antibodies Researchvaccines and immunoinformatics approachesComputational Drug Discovery Methods

Predicting antibody binders and generating synthetic antibodies using deep learning

Open access
Lim, Yoong Wearn, Adler, Adam S., Johnson, David S.·2022·mAbs

Abstract

The antibody drug field has continually sought improvements to methods for candidate discovery and engineering. Historically, most such methods have been laboratory-based, but informatics methods have recently started to make an impact. Deep learning, a subfield of machine learning, is rapidly gaining prominence in the biomedical research. Recent advances in microfluidics technologies and next-generation sequencing have not only revolutionized therapeutic antibody discovery, but also contributed to a vast amount of antibody repertoire sequencing data, providing opportunities for deep learning-based applications. Previously, we used microfluidics, yeast display, and deep sequencing to generate a panel of binder and non-binder antibody sequences to the cancer immunotherapy targets PD-1 and CTLA-4. Here we encoded the antibody light and heavy chain complementarity-determining regions (CDR3s) into antibody images, then built and trained convolutional neural network models to classify binders and non-binders. To improve model interpretability, we performed in silico mutagenesis to identify CDR3 residues that were important for binder classification. We further built generative deep learning models using generative adversarial network models to produce synthetic antibodies against PD-1 and CTLA-4. Our models generated variable length CDR3 sequences that resemble real sequences. Overall, our study demonstrates that deep learning methods can be leveraged to mine and learn patterns in antibody sequences, offering insights into antibody engineering, optimization, and discovery.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/19420862.2022.2069075

Cites

43 of 43 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. [27]Robert PA, Akbar R, Frank R, Pavlović M, Widrich M, Snapkov I, Chernigovskaya M, Scheffer L, Slabodkin A, Mehta BB, et al. One billion synthetic 3D-antibody-antigen complexes enable unconstrained machine-learning formalized investigation of antibody specificity prediction. bioRxiv. 2021; 2021(7): 06.451258.
  2. [42]Wickham H. ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis [Internet]. Springer-Verlag New York; 2016. https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org Accessed 1 April 2022.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Lim, Y. W., Adler, A. S., & Johnson, D. S.
Affiliations
GigaGen (United States) (US)
Corresponding author
Johnson, David S.
Venue
mAbs
Published
2022-04-28
Volume
14
Issue
1
Pages
2069075-2069075
ISSN
  • 1942-0862 (ISSN-L)
  • 1942-0870
OpenAlex
W4225008297
Cited by
49
References
42
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 3
FWCI
5.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • mAbs (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
funding
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Monoclonal and Polyclonal Antibodies Research
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computational Theory and Mathematics › Computational Drug Discovery Methods
Keywords
CDR3 sequences, convolutional neural networks, generative adversarial networks, PD-1, CTLA-4, cancer immunotherapy targets, antibody engineering, in silico mutagenesis, yeast surface display
MeSH terms
Deep Learning, Antibodies, Complementarity Determining Regions, CTLA-4 Antigen, Programmed Cell Death 1 Receptor

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review