Retention Time Prediction through Learning from a Small Training Data Set with a Pretrained Graph Neural Network

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have shown remarkable performance in predicting the retention time (RT) for small molecules. However, the training data set for a particular target chromatographic system tends to exhibit scarcity, which poses a challenge because the experimental process for measuring RT is costly. To address this challenge, transfer learning has been used to leverage an abundant training data set from a related source task. In this study, we present an improved transfer learning method to better predict the RT of molecules for a target chromatographic system by learning from a small training data set with a pretrained GNN. We use a graph isomorphism network as the architecture of the GNN. The GNN is pretrained on the METLIN-SMRT data set and is then fine-tuned on the target training data set for a fixed number of training iterations using the limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno optimizer with a learning rate decay. We demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior predictive performance on various chromatographic systems compared with that of the existing transfer learning methods, especially when only a small training data set is available for use. A potential avenue for future research is to leverage multiple small training data sets from different chromatographic systems to further enhance the generalization performance.