As with most other industries, the early life science R&D drug discovery sector is facing cost-pressure and increasingly higher demands to the products in terms of cost, quality, and time-to-market. Addi-tionally, the complexity of involved targets and systems, requirements for rapid, safe, and developable candidates are increasing. The drug discovery market, often regarded as rather conservative, relies more and more on advanced technologies. It is therefore a significant task for suppliers to create good solu-tions that meet customer requirements. The life science industry has a long tradition of using projects as the preferred method to manage these complex systems developments, such as the production of target proteins, screening of compounds, and follow up of hit compounds. When applying the project ap-proach, the level of uncertainty is usually high, and the risk of those uncertainties must be managed starting in the early planning phase. Thus, this paper focuses on the issue how to manage risks in the early project planning phase. We firstly review state of the art practices in risk management for complex systems project management, and identify an important framework, NTCP, and apply it to successful risk management for early life science projects. Through an in-depth case study in the life science in-dustry, we further demonstrate a systemic integration of the NTPC framework into project planning.