Over the past twelve years, the Centre for Medicines Research has held a series of Workshops on a number of topics related to the drug discovery and development process. The major objective of these Workshops has been to provide an international forum for regula tory, academic and industry representatives to debate together, and suggest solutions to, specific problems. The meeting reported in this volume represents a departure from this approach, in that the par ticipants were drawn largely from the pharmaceutical industry. Senior clinicians, pharmacologists and toxicologists from companies in Europe, the USA and Japan met in May 1994 to discuss a scientific rationale for the conduct of toxicity studies to support the clinical development of new medicines, and to begin to work towards an industry consensus. Achievement of such a consensus is seen as an important step in the process leading towards international harmon isation of the recommendations on the timing of toxicity studies in relation to clinical trials.
