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In recent years, computer-aided synthesis planning methods have allowed a greater exploration of potential synthesis routes, combining state-of-the-art machine-learning methods with chemical knowledge. However, these methods are generally developed to produce individual routes from a singular product to a set of proposed building blocks and are not designed to leverage potential shared paths between targets. These methods do not necessarily encompass real-world use cases in medicinal chemistry, where one seeks to synthesize sets of target compounds in a library mode, looking for maximal convergence into a shared retrosynthetic path going via advanced key intermediate compounds. Using a graph-based processing pipeline, we explore Johnson &amp; Johnson Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (J&amp;J ELN) and publicly available datasets to identify complex routes with multiple target molecules sharing common intermediates, producing convergent synthesis routes. We find that over 70% of all reactions are involved in convergent synthesis, covering over 80% of all projects in the case of J&amp;J ELN data. <\/jats:p>\n          <jats:p>\n            <jats:bold>Scientific contribution<\/jats:bold>\n          <\/jats:p>\n          <jats:p>We introduce a novel planning approach to develop convergent synthesis routes, which can search multiple products and intermediates simultaneously guided by state-of-the-art machine learning single-step retrosynthesis models, enhancing the overall efficiency and practical applicability of retrosynthetic planning. We evaluate the multi-step synthesis planning approach using the extracted convergent routes and observe that solvability is generally high across those routes, being able to identify a convergent route for over 80% of the test routes and showing an individual compound solvability of over 90%. We find that by using a convergent search approach, we can synthesize almost 30% more compounds simultaneously for J&amp;J ELN as compared to using an individual search, while providing an increased use of common intermediates.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1186\/s13321-025-00953-1","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,28]],"date-time":"2025-02-28T12:52:13Z","timestamp":1740747133000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["Improving route development using convergent retrosynthesis planning"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Paula","family":"Torren-Peraire","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Jonas","family":"Verhoeven","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Dorota","family":"Herman","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Hugo","family":"Ceulemans","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Igor V.","family":"Tetko","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"J\u00f6rg K.","family":"Wegner","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"953_CR1","volume-title":"The Logic of Chemical Synthesis","author":"EJ Corey","year":"1991","unstructured":"Corey EJ (1991) The Logic of Chemical Synthesis. 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