Application of the digital annealer unit in optimizing chemical reaction conditions for enhanced production yields
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13321_2025_Article_1043.pdf
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2.58 MB
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Author(s)
Li, Shih-Cheng
Wang, Pei-Hua
Su, Jheng-Wei
Chiang, Wei-Yin
Yeh, Tzu-Lan
Zhavoronkov, Alex
Huang, Shih-Hsien
Lin, Yen-Chu
Ou, Chia-Ho
Chen, Chih-Yu
Date Issued
July 14, 2025
Journal
Journal of Cheminformatics
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Citation
Li, SC., Wang, PH., Su, JW. et al. Application of the digital annealer unit in optimizing chemical reaction conditions for enhanced production yields. J Cheminform 17, 105 (2025).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Finding optimal reaction conditions is crucial for chemical synthesis in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. However, due to the vast chemical space, conducting experiments for all the possible combinations is impractical. Thus, quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) models have been widely used to predict product yields, but evaluating all combinations is still computationally intensive. In this work, we demonstrate the use of Digital Annealer Unit (DAU) can tackle these large-scale optimization problems more efficiently. Two types of models are developed and tested on high-throughput experimentation (HTE) and Reaxys datasets. Our results suggest that the performance of models is comparable to classical machine learning (ML) methods (i.e., Random Forest and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP)), while the inference time of our models requires only seconds with a DAU. In active learning and autonomous reaction condition design, our model shows improvement for reaction yield prediction by incorporating new data, meaning that it can potentially be used in iterative processes. Our method can also accelerate the screening of billions of reaction conditions, achieving speeds millions of times faster than traditional computing units in identifying superior conditions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-025-01043-y
