valentBind

valentBind is a Python implementation of a multivalent binding model: it computes how much ligand and receptor end up bound at equilibrium when multivalent ligand complexes (e.g., antibodies, cytokine complexes, or other multi-headed binders) interact with one or more receptor types on a cell surface, accounting for avidity effects from multiple simultaneous bonds. It's used across several projects in the Meyer Lab to model antibody Fc-receptor and cytokine-receptor binding.

Full documentation and API reference

Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/meyer-lab/valentBind.git

Quick start

There are two entry points, depending on whether your ligand complexes are all identical (polyfc) or drawn from a mixture of different complex compositions (polyc).

from valentbind import polyfc

L0 = 1e-9  # concentration of ligand complexes (M)
KxStar = 1e-12  # detailed-balance-corrected cross-linking constant
f = 4  # valency of the ligand complex
Rtot = [1e5]  # total abundance of each receptor type on the cell
LigC = [1.0]  # relative composition of monomer ligands in the complex
Kav = [[1e6]]  # monomer ligand/receptor affinity matrix (ligands x receptors)

Lbound, Rbound, vieq, Rmulti_n = polyfc(L0, KxStar, f, Rtot, LigC, Kav)

See the docs for the full API reference (including polyc, for mixtures of heterogeneous complexes) and the examples/ directory for complete plotting scripts.

Development

git clone https://github.com/meyer-lab/valentBind.git
cd valentBind
uv sync
make test   # run the test suite
uv run ruff check .   # lint