Novel drug discovery begins at the preclinical laboratory bench as it is essential to answer basic questions concerning compound safety if a new compound is to progress to pharmaceutical development. Before any compound can be considered for dosing in healthy people, it undergoes a series of basic research in vitro and in vivo assays to determine its potential to cause toxicity against human organ systems, such as the heart, liver, or nervous system. It is of paramount importance to maximally de-risk its safety profile as early as possible in discovery to protect patients from unanticipated adverse events in the clinic, as well as control sky-rocketing development costs. The withdrawal of several drugs from the market in the last two
