Cadence Unveils AI-Driven ROCS X AI-Enabled Molecular Search, Unlocking Multi-trillion Molecule Virtual Screening

By: Cadence Design Systems, Inc. via Business Wire

September 25, 2025 at 09:00 AM EDT

Treeline Biosciences validates breakthrough with discovery of more than 150 synthesizable drug candidates in novel chemical space

OpenEye miniCUP--Cadence Molecular Sciences (OpenEye), a business unit of Cadence (Nasdaq: CDNS), announced today at miniCUP Boston, the launch of ROCS X, an AI-enabled virtual-- screening solution that allows scientists to conduct 3D searches of trillions of drug-like molecules. The ROCS X technology was developed and validated through collaboration with Treeline Biosciences, a biotechnology firm focused on addressing serious medical conditions such as cancer. Utilizing ROCS X, Treeline has physically sourced over 150 novel compounds for evaluation as potential drug candidates.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250925980347/en/

Cadence Molecular Sciences (OpenEye), a business unit of Cadence, announced the launch of ROCS X, an AI-enabled virtual screening solution that allows scientists to conduct 3D searches of trillions of drug-like molecules.

“We were challenged by Treeline Biosciences to build and create search capabilities for databases of 3D synthetically accessible drug-like molecules at an unprecedented scale,” said Geoff Skillman, vice president, Research & Development, Cadence Molecular Sciences. “Industry data shows—and we continue to demonstrate—that searching a larger chemical space yields more diverse compounds and more unique scaffolds, enabling customers to accelerate discovery of potential drug candidates.”

ROCS X achieves this breakthrough by building on the Cadence^® Orion^® Molecular Design Platform, uniting the proven OpenEye OMEGA conformer generation and ROCS^® (Rapid Overlay of Chemical Structures) virtual screening software products with AI-enabled 3D search. This powerful combination delivers reliable, efficient, and computationally affordable shape and electrostatic overlays from trillions of molecules. By creating 3D representations of molecules along with electrostatics, ROCS X delivers a performance increase of at least three orders of magnitude over current approaches, outperforming other technologies that claim 3D search or rely on feature trees.

“Using Cadence ROCS X, scientists at Treeline can now search trillions of drug-like molecules—an achievement that was unimaginable just a few years ago,” said Eric Manas, senior vice president of Medicine Design, Treeline Biosciences. “By running ROCS X, we've identified novel chemical matter leading to promising 3D ligand-protein structures across multiple drug discovery projects.”

In a validation experiment, ROCS X was compared to traditional FastROCS enumerated search and found 97% identical molecules from a set of 1,000. Customers can use these industry-leading methods to search over a thousand times more molecules in the synthon space. As such, Treeline has identified a variety of molecules with consistently high synthetic success rates and multiple experimental structures of hits bound to targets.

Early access to ROCS X is available now, with general availability expected in the first quarter of 2026. To request advanced access, please contact oe-sales@cadence.com. To learn more about Cadence Molecular Sciences (OpenEye) and its technologies, please visit https://www.cadence.com/openeye.

About Cadence

Cadence is a market leader in AI and digital twins, pioneering the application of computational software to accelerate innovation in the engineering design of silicon to systems. Our design solutions, based on Cadence’s Intelligent System Design^™ strategy, are essential for the world’s leading semiconductor and systems companies to build their next-generation products from chips to full electromechanical systems that serve a wide range of markets, including hyperscale computing, mobile communications, automotive, aerospace, industrial, drug design and robotics. In 2024, Cadence was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the world’s top 100 best-managed companies. Cadence solutions offer limitless opportunities—learn more at www.cadence.com.

© 2025 Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Cadence, the Cadence logo and the other Cadence marks found at www.cadence.com/go/trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Category: Featured

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250925980347/en/

Industry data shows—and we continue to demonstrate—that searching a larger chemical space yields more diverse compounds and more unique scaffolds, enabling customers to accelerate discovery of potential drug candidates.