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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-6982</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.51847/z45gBPpBCS</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Original research</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Chemical Novelty without Therapeutic Advantage: A Theoretical Account of How Generative Artificial Intelligence Should Reconcile Molecular Originality, Synthetic Accessibility, Selectivity, and Developability in Medicinal Chemistry</article-title>
      </title-group>
                    <contrib-group>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Whitfield</surname>
                <given-names>James</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff1" ref-type="aff">1</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Rahman</surname>
                <given-names>Aisha</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff2" ref-type="aff">2</xref>
                                                            <xref rid="cor1" ref-type="corresp" />
                          </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Sato</surname>
                <given-names>Kenji</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff3" ref-type="aff">3</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                      <contrib contrib-type="author">
              <name>
                <surname>Lindqvist</surname>
                <given-names>Sofia</given-names>
              </name>
                              <xref rid="aff4" ref-type="aff">4</xref>
                                        </contrib>
                  </contrib-group>
                  <aff id="aff1">
            <label>1</label>Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Generative AI, Warwick Business School, Coventry, United Kingdom.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff2">
            <label>2</label>Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Drug Design, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff3">
            <label>3</label>Department of Synthetic Chemistry and Molecular Design, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.
          </aff>
                  <aff id="aff4">
            <label>4</label>Department of Drug Discovery and Development, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
          </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="aisha.rahman@lums.edu.pk">aisha.rahman@lums.edu.pk</email>
                          </corresp>
          </author-notes>
                    <pub-date pub-type="epub">
        <day>28</day>
        <month>10</month>
        <year>2026</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>17</volume>
      <issue>5</issue>
      <fpage>1</fpage>
      <lpage>8</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>Generative artificial intelligence has expanded the range and speed with which candidate chemical structures can be proposed, but molecular originality is not equivalent to therapeutic advantage. A molecule may be unfamiliar in chemical space while remaining difficult to synthesize, poorly aligned with the intended target profile, insufficiently selective for its pharmacological purpose, or unsuitable for further development. This theoretical article examines how medicinal chemistry should interpret these competing dimensions without collapsing them into a single measure of molecular quality. The analysis distinguishes structural novelty from target relevance, synthetic accessibility, intended selectivity, physicochemical and ADME-related developability, and the reliability of the computational predictions on which these judgments depend. It argues that generative molecular design should be treated as a multiobjective decision problem in which some objectives may trade off, some operate as contextual constraints, and some should remain non-compensatory when their failure invalidates otherwise attractive candidates.  The resulting account favors explicit objective-specific evaluation, route-aware synthetic assessment, pharmacology-dependent interpretation of selectivity, prospective developability validation, and reliability-qualified comparison of candidate trade-offs. Therapeutic usefulness therefore depends less on whether generative AI can produce chemically unusual  molecules than on whether those molecules remain defensible after medicinal-chemistry constraints are applied.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
                <kwd>Generative artificial intelligence</kwd>
                <kwd>De novo molecular design</kwd>
                <kwd>Synthetic accessibility</kwd>
                <kwd>Selectivity</kwd>
                <kwd>Developability</kwd>
                <kwd>Multiobjective optimization</kwd>
              </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>
