diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4973c84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+[build-system]
+requires = ["setuptools", "wheel", "numpy"]
+build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index e709474..75a549a 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -1,16 +1,28 @@
 import setuptools
-from multilabel_oversampling import __version__
-print(__version__)
+import re
+import os
 
-with open("README.md", "r") as file:
+# Read version from __init__.py without importing the package (avoids build-time dependency issues)
+_init_path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "multilabel_oversampling", "__init__.py")
+with open(_init_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
+    _content = f.read()
+# Accept either single or double quotes for the version string
+_version_match = re.search(r"__version__\s*=\s*['\"]([^'\"]+)['\"]", _content)
+if _version_match is None:
+    raise RuntimeError("Unable to find version string in __init__.py")
+__version__ = _version_match.group(1)
+
+with open("README.md", "r", encoding="utf-8") as file:
     long_description = file.read()
 
-with open("requirements.txt") as file:
-    required = file.read().splitlines()
-    
+# Read runtime requirements from requirements.txt and ignore blank/comment lines
+with open("requirements.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8") as file:
+    required = [l.strip() for l in file if l.strip() and not l.strip().startswith("#")]
+
+
 setuptools.setup(
     name="multilabel-oversampling",
-    version=__version__, 
+    version=__version__,
     author="Philipp J. Rösch",
     author_email="phiyodr@gmail.com",
     description="Multilabel Oversampling",
@@ -18,20 +30,14 @@
     long_description_content_type="text/markdown",
     url="https://github.com/phiyodr/multilabel-oversampling",
     classifiers=[
-    	"Topic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Artificial Intelligence",
+        "Topic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Artificial Intelligence",
         "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
     ],
     packages=setuptools.find_packages(),
     python_requires='>=3.6',
     package_data={
         # If any package contains *.txt or *.rst files, include them:
-        "": ["*.txt", "*.csv", "*.json"]},
-    install_requires=[
-            "numpy",
-            "scikit-learn",
-            "pandas",
-            "seaborn",
-            "tqdm",
-            "matplotlib"
-        ]
-    )
+        "": ["*.txt", "*.csv", "*.json"],
+    },
+    install_requires=required,
+)