The 3rd International Symposium on Early Toxicity Screening: Early ADME-Tox Screening Approaches included presentations by primarily non-academic scientists, including biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical scientists and contract research service leaders. A central theme heard throughout the presentations involved the fundamental objectives of and obstacles to ADME and toxicity testing during drug development. In summary, successful preclinical drug safety assessment involves understanding a model's limited ability to mimic the human drug response, increasing the model's ability to mimic the human drug response, and adopting new strategies that model better human drug responses, while simultaneously conducting safety assessment more quickly, more thoroughly and more cost effectively.