<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Archiving and Interchange DTD with MathML3 v1.3 20210610//EN" "JATS-archivearticle1-3-mathml3.dtd"><article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
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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-6866</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.51847/dVUc4iFnva</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Original research</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Equivariant Neural Networks for Protein–Ligand Pose Refinement Using Atomic Coordinates and Interaction Energies</article-title>
      </title-group>
                    <contrib-group>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Hassan</surname>
                <given-names>Ali</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                                            <xref rid="cor1" ref-type="corresp" />
                          </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Siddiqui</surname>
                <given-names>Noor</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Khan</surname>
                <given-names>Bilal</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff2" ref-type="aff">2</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Malik</surname>
                <given-names>Sana</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                  </contrib-group>
                  <aff id="aff1">
            <label>1</label>Department of Pharmaceutical Intelligence Systems, Faculty of Pharmacy, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff2">
            <label>2</label>Department of AI Drug Analytics, Faculty of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
          </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="ali.hassan@gmail.com">ali.hassan@gmail.com</email>
                          </corresp>
          </author-notes>
                    <pub-date pub-type="epub">
        <day>28</day>
        <month>08</month>
        <year>2025</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>16</volume>
      <issue>4</issue>
      <fpage>22</fpage>
      <lpage>31</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>Accurate protein–ligand binding poses are crucial for structure-based drug discovery, as downstream interpretation relies on plausible atomic contacts; while docking workflows can generate useful hypotheses, many poses remain geometrically imperfect and require refinement for confident use. Current post-docking refinement tools often rely on either computationally expensive physics-based relaxation or learned scoring models that fail to explicitly preserve three-dimensional molecular symmetry, limiting their reliability when input poses are rotated, translated, or structurally distinct from training examples. To address this, we propose an equivariant neural network that refines docked protein–ligand poses directly from atomic coordinates and interaction energies, ensuring that coordinate corrections respect rotational and translational symmetry while remaining informed by local protein–ligand physics. The protein–ligand complex is represented as a three-dimensional graph, with atoms as nodes and spatial contacts as edges; node features capture atomic identity and chemistry, while edge features encode distances, directions, and interaction energies such as electrostatics, van der Waals forces, and hydrogen bonds. Conceptually, this model is expected to guide docked ligands toward more physically plausible binding geometries without relying on fixed molecular orientations and can provide an interpretable quality score indicating whether the refined pose is suitable for downstream design. By combining symmetry-preserving architecture with energy-aware refinement, equivariant geometric deep learning offers a principled approach bridging rapid docking and computationally intensive physical methods, positioning this model as a valuable post-processing tool in modern drug discovery pipelines.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
                <kwd>Equivariant neural networks</kwd>
                <kwd>Protein–ligand docking</kwd>
                <kwd>Pose refinement</kwd>
                <kwd>Geometric deep learning</kwd>
                <kwd>Interaction energies</kwd>
                <kwd>Structure-based drug design</kwd>
              </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>