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  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="iso-abbrev">Pharmacophore</journal-id>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">pharmacophorejournal.com</journal-id>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">Pharmacophore</journal-id>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title>Pharmacophore</journal-title>
      </journal-title-group>
      <issn pub-type="epub">2229-5402</issn>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">pharmacophorejournal.com-6889</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.51847/Q89gHhQ6mf</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Original research</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Siamese Neural Networks for Bioisosteric Replacement Using Matched Molecular Pairs and Binding Assay Data</article-title>
      </title-group>
                    <contrib-group>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Youssef</surname>
                <given-names>Ahmed</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                                            <xref rid="cor1" ref-type="corresp" />
                          </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Hassan</surname>
                <given-names>Khaled</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Elamin</surname>
                <given-names>Mahmoud</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff2" ref-type="aff">2</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                  </contrib-group>
                  <aff id="aff1">
            <label>1</label>Department of Intelligent Pharmaceutical Systems, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff2">
            <label>2</label>Department of Computational Drug Analytics, Faculty of Medicine, Sudan University of Science and Technology, Khartoum, Sudan.
          </aff>
                          <author-notes>
            <corresp id="cor1">
              <bold>Address for correspondence:</bold> Prof. Wael Abu Dayyih, Department of
              Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Mutah University, Al-Karak 61710, Jordan.
                              E-mail: <email xlink:href="ahmed.youssef@gmail.com">ahmed.youssef@gmail.com</email>
                          </corresp>
          </author-notes>
                    <pub-date pub-type="epub">
        <day>28</day>
        <month>04</month>
        <year>2026</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>17</volume>
      <issue>2</issue>
      <fpage>34</fpage>
      <lpage>43</lpage>
      <permissions>
        <copyright-statement>
          Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Pharmacophore
        </copyright-statement>
        <copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
        <license>
          <ali:license_ref xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/"
            specific-use="textmining" content-type="ccbyncsalicense">
            https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/</ali:license_ref>
          <license-p>This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of
            the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows
            others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate
            credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.</license-p>
        </license>
      </permissions>
      <abstract>
        <title>A<sc>BSTRACT</sc></title>
        <p>Bioisosteric replacement is a fundamental design principle in medicinal chemistry, yet identifying substituents that preserve biological activity remains largely empirical. A model-oriented approach frames this challenge as a paired molecular learning problem rather than a simple similarity search. Existing computational methods often rely on physicochemical similarity, historical replacement tables, or local transformation statistics, which may fail to fully leverage paired activity evidence from matched molecular pairs and binding assays. To address this, a Siamese neural network can be defined to learn from matched molecular pairs annotated with activity data, predicting whether a structural modification could serve as a bioisosteric replacement that maintains target affinity. In this twin-network architecture, shared weights encode both the original and modified molecules into comparable latent representations, with a contrastive or classification loss applied to the joint representation based on curated assay-derived activity labels. Conceptually, the model would distinguish activity-preserving substitutions from detrimental modifications while accommodating molecular graph or fingerprint inputs, and it could also highlight molecular features that inform replacement decisions. By providing a data-driven and interpretable framework, the Siamese approach has the potential to accelerate lead optimization by prioritizing high-probability substitutions for chemical synthesis and biological testing.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
                <kwd>Siamese neural network</kwd>
                <kwd>Bioisosteric replacement</kwd>
                <kwd>Matched molecular pairs</kwd>
                <kwd>Binding affinity</kwd>
                <kwd>Molecular graph learning</kwd>
                <kwd>Medicinal chemistry</kwd>
              </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>