Multimodal Benchmarking of Foundation Model Representations for Cellular Perturbation Response Prediction

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Abstract
The decreasing cost of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has enabled the collection of massive scRNA-seq datasets, which are now being used to train transformer-based cell foundation models (FMs). One of the most promising applications of these FMs is perturbation response modeling. This task aims to forecast how cells will respond to drugs or genetic interventions. Accurate perturbation response models could drastically accelerate drug discovery by reducing the space of interventions that need to be tested in the wet lab. However, recent studies have shown that FM-based models often struggle to outperform simpler baselines for perturbation response prediction. A key obstacle is the lack of understanding of the components driving performance in FM-based perturbation response models. In this work, we conduct the first systematic pan-modal study of perturbation embeddings, with an emphasis on those derived from biological FMs. We benchmark their predictive accuracy, analyze patterns in their predictions, and identify the most successful representation learning strategies. Our findings offer insights into what FMs are learning and provide practical guidance for improving perturbation response modeling.

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