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BoltzMol-1: Towards Reliable Virtual Screening for Fast and Cost-Effective Hit Discovery

Getz, N.; Smith, G.; Colgan, A.; Fan, V.; Cavalleri, L.; Capponi, F.; Wohlwend, J.; Gitter, A.; Kritzer, J.; Maiorano, M.; Wlodarchak, N.; Corso, G.; Passaro, S.

2026-07-06 biochemistry
10.64898/2026.07.04.736485 bioRxiv
Show abstract

We present BoltzMol-1, a small-molecule hit discovery pipeline, centered on an optimized version of Boltz-2, explicitly adapted for prospective discovery. Reliable hit discovery that generalizes across target classes (rather than only the well-characterized families that dominate existing ligand data) would broaden the range of biology accessible to small-molecule intervention and reduce reliance on resource-intensive high-throughput screening. Towards this goal, the system prioritizes compounds for rapid experimental validation by coupling model-driven ranking with streamlined procurement from commercial catalogs. To improve developability at the point of selection, we introduce a suite of ADMET models for kinetic solubility (logS), lipophilicity (logD), and Caco-2 permeability. These models act as an early triage layer, systematically filtering out compounds with unfavorable physicochemical and absorption properties prior to synthesis or purchase. Across a panel of ten targets (most with no representation in the underlying affinity training data) we observe strong prospective performance on challenging systems. Functional actives or binders were identified for 6 of 10 targets, despite modest experimental budgets of 28-96 compounds per target. These results include successes on receptors and enzymes traditionally considered difficult for structure- or ligand-based approaches. Collectively, this work establishes a practical framework for low-throughput, cost constrained discovery campaigns capable of delivering chemically tractable binders with favorable property profiles.

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