Datasets:
dataset_info:
- config_name: DC50
features:
- name: SMILES
dtype: string
- name: POI_Name
dtype: string
- name: POI_Sequence
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_Name
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line
dtype: string
- name: Value_Type
dtype: string
- name: Value_Unit
dtype: string
- name: Value
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- name: Value_Error
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Range_Min
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- name: Value_Range_Max
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- name: Value_Concentration
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- name: Assay_Time
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Operator
dtype: string
- name: Value_Category
dtype: string
- name: Value_Concentration_Unit
dtype: string
- name: Modality
dtype: string
- name: POI_UniProt
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_UniProt
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_Sequence
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_ID
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_Species
dtype: string
- name: Reference
dtype: string
- name: Description
dtype: string
- name: Database
dtype: string
- name: Assay
dtype: string
- name: TPD_ID
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_Description
dtype: string
- name: POI_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: SMILES_Held_Out
dtype: bool
- name: SMILES_Scaffold_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: SMILES_Butina_Cluster
dtype: int64
splits:
- name: train
num_bytes: 15459109
num_examples: 4184
download_size: 618282
dataset_size: 15459109
- config_name: Dmax
features:
- name: SMILES
dtype: string
- name: POI_Name
dtype: string
- name: POI_Sequence
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_Name
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line
dtype: string
- name: Value_Type
dtype: string
- name: Value_Unit
dtype: string
- name: Value
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- name: Value_Error
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- name: Value_Range_Min
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Range_Max
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Concentration
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- name: Assay_Time
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Operator
dtype: string
- name: Value_Category
dtype: string
- name: Value_Concentration_Unit
dtype: string
- name: Modality
dtype: string
- name: POI_UniProt
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_UniProt
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_Sequence
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_ID
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_Species
dtype: string
- name: Reference
dtype: string
- name: Description
dtype: string
- name: Database
dtype: string
- name: Assay
dtype: string
- name: TPD_ID
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_Description
dtype: string
- name: POI_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: SMILES_Held_Out
dtype: bool
- name: SMILES_Scaffold_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: SMILES_Butina_Cluster
dtype: int64
splits:
- name: train
num_bytes: 8580261
num_examples: 2377
download_size: 338826
dataset_size: 8580261
- config_name: default
features:
- name: SMILES
dtype: string
- name: POI_Name
dtype: string
- name: POI_Sequence
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_Name
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line
dtype: string
- name: Value_Type
dtype: string
- name: Value_Unit
dtype: string
- name: Value
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- name: Value_Error
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Range_Min
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Range_Max
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Concentration
dtype: float64
- name: Assay_Time
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Operator
dtype: string
- name: Value_Category
dtype: string
- name: Value_Concentration_Unit
dtype: string
- name: Modality
dtype: string
- name: POI_UniProt
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_UniProt
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_Sequence
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_ID
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_Species
dtype: string
- name: Reference
dtype: string
- name: Description
dtype: string
- name: Database
dtype: string
- name: Assay
dtype: string
- name: TPD_ID
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_Description
dtype: string
- name: POI_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: SMILES_Held_Out
dtype: bool
- name: SMILES_Scaffold_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: SMILES_Butina_Cluster
dtype: int64
splits:
- name: train
num_bytes: 24039370
num_examples: 6561
download_size: 798178
dataset_size: 24039370
- config_name: multitask
features:
- name: SMILES
dtype: string
- name: POI_Name
dtype: string
- name: POI_Sequence
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_Name
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line
dtype: string
- name: Value_Type_DC50
dtype: string
- name: Value_Unit_DC50
dtype: string
- name: Value_DC50
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Error_DC50
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Range_Min_DC50
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Range_Max_DC50
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Concentration_DC50
dtype: float64
- name: Assay_Time
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Operator_DC50
dtype: string
- name: Value_Category_DC50
dtype: string
- name: Value_Concentration_Unit_DC50
dtype: 'null'
- name: Modality
dtype: string
- name: POI_UniProt
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_UniProt
dtype: string
- name: Ligase_Sequence
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_ID
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_Species
dtype: string
- name: Reference
dtype: string
- name: Description
dtype: string
- name: Database
dtype: string
- name: Assay
dtype: string
- name: TPD_ID_DC50
dtype: string
- name: Cell_Line_Description
dtype: string
- name: POI_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: SMILES_Held_Out
dtype: bool
- name: SMILES_Scaffold_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: SMILES_Butina_Cluster
dtype: int64
- name: Value_Type_Dmax
dtype: string
- name: Value_Unit_Dmax
dtype: string
- name: Value_Dmax
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Error_Dmax
dtype: float64
- name: Value_Range_Min_Dmax
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- name: Value_Range_Max_Dmax
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- name: Value_Concentration_Dmax
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- name: Value_Operator_Dmax
dtype: string
- name: Value_Category_Dmax
dtype: string
- name: Value_Concentration_Unit_Dmax
dtype: string
- name: TPD_ID_Dmax
dtype: string
splits:
- name: train
num_bytes: 6303033
num_examples: 1563
download_size: 261333
dataset_size: 6303033
configs:
- config_name: DC50
data_files:
- split: train
path: DC50/train-*
- config_name: Dmax
data_files:
- split: train
path: Dmax/train-*
- config_name: default
data_files:
- split: train
path: data/train-*
- config_name: multitask
data_files:
- split: train
path: multitask/train-*
license: mit
tags:
- tabular
pretty_name: TACK
TACK — TArgeting Chimeras Knowledge
A curated, ML-ready dataset and benchmark for PROTAC degradation activity prediction
Overview
Proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) are a promising drug modality that induces targeted protein degradation by hijacking the cell's native ubiquitin–proteasome system. However, rational PROTAC design remains challenging due to the complex interplay between molecular structure, target proteins (POIs), E3 ligases, and cellular context.
TACK addresses three critical gaps in existing PROTAC ML benchmarks:
- Data scarcity and inconsistency — harmonized from three major public repositories with standardized SMILES, protein annotations, and experimental conditions
- Lack of rigorous benchmarks — scaffold-based 5×5 cross-validation and formal statistical testing (Friedman, Wilcoxon, Tukey HSD) rather than simple train/test splits
- Limited scope — supports regression (pDC₅₀, Dmax) and binary classification, not just the binary classification framing common in prior work
Ribes*, Dunlop*, and Mercado. TACK: A statistical evaluation of degradation activity on a novel TArgeting Chimeras Knowledge dataset. KDD AI for Sciences Track, 2026.
Dataset at a Glance
| Statistic | TPDdb | PROTAC-DB | PROTACpedia | TACK |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total records | 22,183 | 9,380 | 1,203 | 6,561 |
| Unique PROTACs | 21,429 | 6,110 | 1,189 | 3,514 |
| Degradation endpoints | 6,518 | 2,170 | 580 | 6,561 |
| POI targets | 184 | 441 | 79 | 164 |
| E3 ligases | 8 | 21 | 8 | 9 |
| Cell lines | 142 | — | 139 | 155 |
| Hold-out set entries | — | — | — | 913 |
The dataset contains 4,184 DC₅₀ and 2,377 Dmax measurements. Approximately 55% of entries are classified as active (DC₅₀ ≤ 100 nM and Dmax ≥ 80%).
Most represented biology:
- POIs: Androgen Receptor (26.7%), SMARCA2 (12.0%), BTK (8.9%) — top 5 account for 61.6% of endpoints
- E3 ligases: CRBN and VHL together account for 98.7% of measurements
- Cell lines: LNCaP (20.9%), SW1573 (15.2%), Mino (7.0%) across 155 unique lines
Configs (Subsets)
| Config | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
default |
All endpoints (DC₅₀ + Dmax combined) | 6,561 |
DC50 |
Potency measurements only | 4,184 |
Dmax |
Maximal degradation efficacy only | 2,377 |
multitask |
Paired DC₅₀ + Dmax for the same PROTAC/assay, also used for binary activity classification | 1,563 |
Loading the Dataset
from datasets import load_dataset
# All endpoints
ds = load_dataset("ailab-bio/TACK")
# DC50 only
ds_dc50 = load_dataset("ailab-bio/TACK", "DC50")
# Dmax only
ds_dmax = load_dataset("ailab-bio/TACK", "Dmax")
# Paired multitask (DC50 + Dmax for same compound)
ds_multi = load_dataset("ailab-bio/TACK", "multitask")
The SMILES_Held_Out column flags the structurally dissimilar held-out set (~10% of data). To reproduce the train/validation split used in the paper:
ds = load_dataset("ailab-bio/TACK", "DC50")["train"]
train_val = ds.filter(lambda x: not x["SMILES_Held_Out"])
held_out = ds.filter(lambda x: x["SMILES_Held_Out"])
Schema
Common columns (all configs)
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
SMILES |
string | Canonical RDKit SMILES of the PROTAC |
POI_Name |
string | Gene name of the protein of interest |
POI_Sequence |
string | UniProt amino acid sequence of the POI |
POI_UniProt |
string | UniProt accession for the POI |
Ligase_Name |
string | Name of the E3 ligase |
Ligase_Sequence |
string | UniProt amino acid sequence of the E3 ligase |
Ligase_UniProt |
string | UniProt accession for the E3 ligase |
Cell_Line |
string | Cell line name (Cellosaurus-standardized) |
Cell_Line_ID |
string | Cellosaurus identifier |
Cell_Line_Species |
string | Species of origin for the cell line |
Cell_Line_Description |
string | Textual description from Cellosaurus |
Value |
float64 | Measured endpoint value |
Value_Unit |
string | Unit of the value (nM for DC₅₀; % for Dmax) |
Value_Type |
string | Endpoint type (DC50 or Dmax) |
Value_Operator |
string | Comparison operator if censored (<, >, etc.) |
Value_Error |
float64 | Reported measurement error (if available) |
Value_Range_Min |
float64 | Lower bound for range-reported values |
Value_Range_Max |
float64 | Upper bound for range-reported values |
Value_Concentration |
float64 | Treatment concentration for Dmax assays |
Value_Concentration_Unit |
string | Unit of treatment concentration |
Value_Category |
string | Categorical activity label (where applicable) |
Assay_Time |
float64 | Treatment duration in hours |
Assay |
string | Standardized assay type (e.g., Western Blot, HiBit) |
Modality |
string | Compound modality (PROTAC, molecular glue, etc.) |
Reference |
string | Source literature or patent reference |
Description |
string | Original assay description |
Database |
string | Source database (TPDdb, PROTAC-DB, PROTACpedia) |
TPD_ID |
string | Original identifier in the source database |
POI_Cluster |
int64 | POI sequence-based cluster ID |
SMILES_Scaffold_Cluster |
int64 | Murcko scaffold cluster ID (used for CV splitting) |
SMILES_Butina_Cluster |
int64 | Butina/Tanimoto cluster ID |
SMILES_Held_Out |
bool | True if this entry belongs to the structural hold-out set |
The multitask config replaces Value, Value_Unit, etc. with Value_DC50, Value_Dmax and analogous suffixed columns, enabling simultaneous supervision on both endpoints.
Curation Pipeline
Raw data was aggregated from three repositories and cleaned through a multi-stage pipeline:
- SMILES standardization — canonicalization via RDKit; duplicates resolved by weighted scoring
- Endpoint standardization — DC₅₀ values converted to nM; range values converted to arithmetic mean with bounds stored; censored values (operators) preserved but flagged for exclusion from evaluation sets; categorical patent grades excluded
- Protein annotation — POI and E3 ligase names mapped to UniProt accessions; amino acid sequences retrieved from UniProt; BRD4 isoform handling applied
- Cell line standardization — validated against Cellosaurus; standardized identifiers and descriptions attached
- Assay standardization — assay descriptions parsed and normalized (e.g., "WB" → "Western Blot"); treatment concentrations extracted from metadata and free-text fields
- Hold-out construction — ~10% most structurally dissimilar PROTACs (by average Tanimoto distance using 512-bit Morgan8 fingerprints) isolated before any model training
- Scaffold-based CV clustering — remaining data grouped by Murcko scaffolds to prevent leakage between CV folds
Please refer to this link for the codebase used to generate the data.
Benchmark Results
Models were evaluated using scaffold-based 5×5 repeated cross-validation with statistical testing (Friedman + Wilcoxon + Benjamini–Hochberg correction for feature selection; Tukey HSD for architecture comparison).
Regression (hold-out set)
| Task | Model | MAE | RMSE | R² | Spearman ρ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pDC₅₀ | MLP | 0.58 | 0.80 | 0.66 | 0.76 |
| Dmax | XGBoost | 18.86 | 25.68 | 0.36 | 0.66 |
Binary Classification (validation folds, mean ± CI)
| Model | ROC-AUC | PR-AUC | MCC | Recall @ Prec≥0.8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XGBoost | 0.851 | 0.870 | 0.523 | 0.777 |
| MLP | 0.799 | 0.824 | 0.448 | 0.600 |
| PROTAC-STAN | 0.746 | 0.773 | 0.405 | 0.443 |
All pairwise differences are statistically significant (Tukey HSD, p < 0.001).
Key findings:
- pDC₅₀ is substantially more predictable than Dmax (R² 0.66 vs. 0.36), reflecting the greater dependence of maximal degradation on cellular factors not captured by current molecular representations
- Classical tree-based methods (XGBoost) outperform the domain-specific GNN PROTAC-STAN, consistent with the small-to-medium tabular dataset regime
- Simple one-hot or n-gram protein encodings often match expensive ESM-S embeddings, particularly with XGBoost; ESM-S embeddings give a modest advantage for XGBoost on the classification task
Ensemble Uncertainty Quantification
Ensemble standard deviation correlates positively with absolute prediction error, enabling confidence-aware compound prioritization:
| Task | Method | RMSE | Spearman ρ (σ vs. |error|) |
|---|---|---|---|
| pDC₅₀ | Caruana (33 models) | 0.672 | 0.207* |
| pDC₅₀ | Uniform avg (500 models) | 0.683 | 0.355** |
| Dmax | Caruana (22 models) | 21.32 | 0.543** |
| Dmax | Uniform avg (500 models) | 22.92 | 0.694** |
** p < 0.001; * p < 0.01
Best Models
Pre-trained ensemble models (XGBoost and MLP, all feature configurations, 25 CV folds each) are available on Zenodo:
Citation
If you use TACK in your research, please cite:
@misc{ribes2026tackstatisticalevaluationdegradation,
title={TACK: A statistical evaluation of degradation activity on a novel TArgeting Chimeras Knowledge dataset},
author={Stefano Ribes and Nils Dunlop and Rocío Mercado},
year={2026},
eprint={2605.19579},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={q-bio.QM},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19579},
}
License
The TACK dataset is released under the MIT License. The underlying experimental data is sourced from PROTAC-DB, PROTACpedia, and TPDdb — please refer to the respective database licenses for conditions on downstream use of the original data.
Acknowledgements
SR and RM acknowledge funding from the Chalmers Gender Initiative for Excellence (Genie). RM and ND acknowledge funding from the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP), supported by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The authors thank Yossra Gharbi, Alexander Persson, and Felix Erngård for helpful discussions. Computations were enabled by Chalmers e-Commons and NAISS (grant 2022-06725).