This review is designed to provide a basic overview of the first webinar topic“Nonclinical Drug Safety Evaluations in Drug Development” which will be discussed in detail in the webinar. This overview will outline key aspects of the overall drug development process with focus on the role of nonclinical safety evaluations at each stage of the development; provide definitions of key terminology used in nonclinical toxicology and where appropriate, literature references to provide webinar attendees more detail on key topic areas. In the webinar, an overview of the state-of-the-art non-clinical approaches and the data sets necessary to make key decisions to progress a compound forward in drug development will be reviewed. Three key decision points are addressed: Drug discovery (focus on lead optimization), nonclinical (or preclinical) safety evaluations prior to first-in-human studies and clinical development and nonclinical studies required for marketing decisions. The webinar discussions will focus primarily on small-molecule drugs (i.e. drugs with a molecular mass (MM) < 1,000). This webinar is the first in a 3 part series on nonclinical safety from ComplianceOnline. In a webinar titled “Practical Applications of the ICH, OECD and other relevant regulatory guidance's in Drug Development” the ICH and other key regulatory guidance's that pertain to nonclinical drug development will be reviewed and discussed in details. In the third webinar, titled “The Role of Investigative Toxicology and Safety Biomarkers in Drug Safety Evaluations”, the application of innovative toxicology approaches that are being used to minimize the rate of attrition, facilitate earlier data-driven decisions and deliver safer leads into development or position the finding(s) as they relate to Human will be discussed. This review and the first webinar will focus mainly on the standard “best practices” in nonclinical evaluations for each stage of drug development.