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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-6948</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.51847/rv7Ot5GqYS</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Original research</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Neuro-Symbolic Chemistry Reconnects Learned Molecular Representations with Reaction Rules, Biological Mechanisms, and Scientific Constraints</article-title>
      </title-group>
                    <contrib-group>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Hofmann</surname>
                <given-names>Juergen</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                                            <xref rid="cor1" ref-type="corresp" />
                          </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Novotny</surname>
                <given-names>Jan</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff2" ref-type="aff">2</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Horvathova</surname>
                <given-names>Eva</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff3" ref-type="aff">3</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Novak</surname>
                <given-names>Lukas</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff4" ref-type="aff">4</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                  </contrib-group>
                  <aff id="aff1">
            <label>1</label>Department of Neuro-Symbolic Chemistry and Learned Representations, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff2">
            <label>2</label>Department of Reaction Rules and Biological Mechanisms, Faculty of Pharmacy, Mendel University in Brno, Brno, Czech Republic.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff3">
            <label>3</label>Department of Scientific Constraints in Neuro-Symbolic Models, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff4">
            <label>4</label>Department of Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning in Drug Discovery, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic.
          </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="juergen.hofmann@vetmeduni.ac.">juergen.hofmann@vetmeduni.ac.</email>
                          </corresp>
          </author-notes>
                    <pub-date pub-type="epub">
        <day>28</day>
        <month>10</month>
        <year>2025</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>16</volume>
      <issue>5</issue>
      <fpage>67</fpage>
      <lpage>77</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>Machine-learning systems can encode molecular structures, predict chemical transformations, generate candidate compounds, and infer biomedical relationships, yet these capabilities are commonly distributed across models that do not share a coherent scientific reasoning framework. Learned representations can identify statistical regularities without preserving explicit chemical syntax, reaction applicability, biological context, or the evidentiary status of mechanistic claims. Conversely, symbolic systems can express rules and ontological relationships but may be brittle, incomplete, and poorly adapted to uncertain or previously unseen molecular contexts. This article proposes a neuro-symbolic molecular architecture designed to reconnect these representational modes through bidirectional reasoning. The proposed system contains learned molecular and reaction encoders, explicit chemical and biological knowledge layers, neural-to-symbolic grounding, symbolic-to-neural feedback, constraint adjudication, uncertainty estimation, contradiction preservation, provenance tracking, and task-specific reasoning interfaces. Its central contribution is not a new predictive score but an architectural account of how molecular hypotheses could be generated, checked, revised, qualified, or deferred through interactions among embeddings, reaction rules, mechanistic knowledge, and scientific constraints. The framework distinguishes syntactic validity from reaction feasibility, association from mechanism, model confidence from calibrated uncertainty, and benchmark performance from prospective pharmaceutical usefulness. It also specifies how the architecture should be evaluated separately in molecular design, synthesis planning, and mechanism inference. The proposed system remains conceptual: it has not been empirically validated, does not establish causal or therapeutic claims, and cannot substitute for experimental confirmation, medicinal-chemistry judgement, or regulatory assessment. Its intended value is to provide a disciplined foundation for developing molecular AI systems whose outputs are not merely plausible or fluent, but scientifically inspectable, constraint-aware, and appropriately bounded.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
                <kwd>Neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence</kwd>
                <kwd>Molecular representation learning</kwd>
                <kwd>Reaction rules</kwd>
                <kwd>Mechanistic knowledge graphs</kwd>
                <kwd>Chemical constraints</kwd>
                <kwd>Uncertainty quantification</kwd>
              </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>