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Main Authors: Nunes, Susana, Badreddine, Samy, Pesquita, Catia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02276
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author Nunes, Susana
Badreddine, Samy
Pesquita, Catia
author_facet Nunes, Susana
Badreddine, Samy
Pesquita, Catia
contents Knowledge graphs (KGs) are powerful tools for modelling complex, multi-relational data and supporting hypothesis generation, particularly in applications like drug repurposing. However, for predictive methods to gain acceptance as credible scientific tools, they must ensure not only accuracy but also the capacity to offer meaningful scientific explanations. This paper presents a novel approach REx, for generating scientific explanations based in link prediction in knowledge graphs. It employs reward and policy mechanisms that consider desirable properties of scientific explanation to guide a reinforcement learning agent in the identification of explanatory paths within a KG. The approach further enriches explanatory paths with domain-specific ontologies, ensuring that the explanations are both insightful and grounded in established biomedical knowledge. We evaluate our approach in drug repurposing using three popular knowledge graph benchmarks. The results clearly demonstrate its ability to generate explanations that validate predictive insights against biomedical knowledge and that outperform the state-of-the-art approaches in predictive performance, establishing REx as a relevant contribution to advance AI-driven scientific discovery.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_02276
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rewarding Explainability in Drug Repurposing with Knowledge Graphs
Nunes, Susana
Badreddine, Samy
Pesquita, Catia
Artificial Intelligence
Knowledge graphs (KGs) are powerful tools for modelling complex, multi-relational data and supporting hypothesis generation, particularly in applications like drug repurposing. However, for predictive methods to gain acceptance as credible scientific tools, they must ensure not only accuracy but also the capacity to offer meaningful scientific explanations. This paper presents a novel approach REx, for generating scientific explanations based in link prediction in knowledge graphs. It employs reward and policy mechanisms that consider desirable properties of scientific explanation to guide a reinforcement learning agent in the identification of explanatory paths within a KG. The approach further enriches explanatory paths with domain-specific ontologies, ensuring that the explanations are both insightful and grounded in established biomedical knowledge. We evaluate our approach in drug repurposing using three popular knowledge graph benchmarks. The results clearly demonstrate its ability to generate explanations that validate predictive insights against biomedical knowledge and that outperform the state-of-the-art approaches in predictive performance, establishing REx as a relevant contribution to advance AI-driven scientific discovery.
title Rewarding Explainability in Drug Repurposing with Knowledge Graphs
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02276