Why does fewer than one in ten drugs that enter clinical trials ever reach patients — and what can be done about it before a compound ever gets there?

In this episode of Cognitio, Richard Knight, toxicologist and co-founder of Apconix, a nonclinical consultancy and lab working with biotech and pharma companies worldwide. Richard spent twenty years in global safety assessment at AstraZeneca, including several years as oncology safety lead, before starting Apconix a decade ago.

Richard makes the case that toxicology shouldn't be treated as a late-stage hurdle, but as a design consideration from day one of drug discovery. Drawing on real AstraZeneca case studies — including the molecule that became the lung cancer drug Tagrisso — he shows how understanding a drug's target, its chemistry and the patient it's intended for can shape a better, faster, cheaper path through development. He closes with a grounded take on where non-animal testing methods and AI genuinely fit in the future of toxicology, and where the hype gets ahead of the reality.

In this episode:

• Why toxicology should be a value-adding part of candidate selection, not a gate at the end of discovery
• Two companies, the same safety data, two very different (and defensible) calls
• How early safety thinking helped one molecule beat its rivals to market, and outlast them
• A practical framework for assessing risk: the target, the chemistry, the patient
• Where NAMs (non-animal methods) and AI genuinely help — and where they don't