mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

CAGenMol: Condition-Aware Diffusion Language Model for Goal-Directed Molecular Generation

arXiv 2604.11483 ↗First posted 13 Apr 2026cs.LG q-bio.QMcited by 2

On the map: Diffusion models → Flow matching, time series and science

Abstract (arXiv)

Goal-directed molecular generation requires satisfying heterogeneous constraints such as protein--ligand compatibility and multi-objective drug-like properties, yet existing methods often optimize these constraints in isolation, failing to reconcile conflicting objectives (e.g., affinity vs. safety), and struggle to navigate the non-differentiable chemical space without compromising structural validity. To address these challenges, we propose CAGenMol, a condition-aware discrete diffusion framework over molecular sequences that formulates molecular design as conditional denoising guided by heterogeneous structural and property signals. By coupling discrete diffusion with reinforcement learning, the model aligns the generation trajectory with non-differentiable objectives while preserving chemical validity and diversity. The non-autoregressive nature of diffusion language model further enables iterative refinement of molecular fragments at inference time. Experiments on structure-conditioned, property-conditioned, and dual-conditioned benchmarks demonstrate consistent improvements over state-of-the-art methods in binding affinity, drug-likeness, and success rate, highlighting the effectiveness of our framework.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Flow matching, time series and science, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 22 of its 54 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Apr 2026.

Builds on

22 of 54 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025GenMol: A Drug Discovery Generalist with Discrete Diffusion10 Jan
  2. 2024DecompOpt: Controllable and Decomposed Diffusion Models for Structure-based Molecular Optimization7 Mar
  3. 2024DecompDiff: Diffusion Models with Decomposed Priors for Structure-Based Drug Design26 Feb
  4. 2022Structure-based Drug Design with Equivariant Diffusion Models24 Oct

Other references · 18

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  3. 2021Structured Denoising Diffusion Models in Discrete State-Spacescited by 1,719
  4. 2023Discrete Diffusion Modeling by Estimating the Ratios of the Data Distributioncited by 745
  5. 2024Simplified and Generalized Masked Diffusion for Discrete Datacited by 626
  6. 2021Therapeutics Data Commons: Machine Learning Datasets and Tasks for Drug Discovery and Developmentcited by 264
  7. 2022Pocket2Mol: Efficient Molecular Sampling Based on 3D Protein Pocketscited by 183
  8. 20233D Equivariant Diffusion for Target-Aware Molecule Generation and Affinity Predictioncited by 177
  9. 2022A 3D Generative Model for Structure-Based Drug Designcited by 149
  10. 2022Generating 3D Molecules for Target Protein Bindingcited by 104
  11. 2021Differentiable Scaffolding Tree for Molecular Optimizationcited by 53
  12. 2023Gotta be SAFE: A New Framework for Molecular Designcited by 48
6 more
  1. 2024MolCRAFT: Structure-Based Drug Design in Continuous Parameter Spacecited by 48
  2. 2022Zero-Shot 3D Drug Design by Sketching and Generatingcited by 24
  3. 2024textttMiniMol: A Parameter-Efficient Foundation Model for Molecular Learningcited by 20
  4. 2025Taming Masked Diffusion Language Models via Consistency Trajectory Reinforcement Learning with Fewer Decoding Stepcited by 17
  5. 2024Structure-based Drug Design Benchmark: Do 3D Methods Really Dominate?cited by 7
  6. 2025MolChord: Structure-Sequence Alignment for Protein-Guided Drug Designcited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Chain-of-Generation: Progressive Latent Diffusion for Text-Guided Molecular Design
  2. 2026Ligand-Conditioned Discrete Diffusion for Protein Sequence-Structure Co-Design
  3. 2026Adopting Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards for Molecular Generation
  4. 2025Uncertainty-Aware Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning-Guided Diffusion Models for 3D De Novo Molecular Design
  5. 2026Fine-tuning Pocket-Aware Diffusion Models via Denoising Policy Optimization
  6. 2026MolDA: Molecular Understanding and Generation via Large Language Diffusion Model
  7. 2026Fine-Tuning Diffusion Models for Molecular Generation via Reinforcement Learning and Fast Sampling
  8. 2025Graph Diffusion Transformers are In-Context Molecular Designers