Hubble2D6: A deep learning approach for predicting drug metabolic activity

Abstract

Cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) is a highly polymorphic gene whose protein product metabolizes more than 20% of clinically used drugs. Genetic variations in CYP2D6 are responsible for interindividual heterogeneity in drug response that can lead to drug toxicity and ineffective treatment, making CYP2D6 one of the most important pharmacogenes. Prediction of CYP2D6 phenotype relies on curation of literature-derived functional studies to assign a functional status to CYP2D6 haplotypes. As the number of large-scale sequencing efforts grows, new haplotypes continue to be discovered, and assignment of function is challenging to maintain. To address this challenge, we have trained a deep learning model to predict functional status of CYP2D6 haplotypes, called Hubble.2D6. We find that Hubble.2D6 predicts CYP2D6 haplotype functional status with 88% accuracy in a held out test set and explains a significant amount of the variability in in vitro functional data. Hubble.2D6 may be a useful tool for assigning function to haplotypes with uncurated function, which may be used for screening individuals who are at risk of being poor metabolizers.