Galapagos awarded EUR 5.2 million in research grants
Mechelen, Belgium; 16 October 2007 - Galapagos NV announced today that Galapagos and its service division BioFocus DPI have been awarded a total of EUR 5.2 million in grants from the Netherlands and the EU. The grants support the development of candidate drugs for various indications, including Galapagos' core programs in bone and joint diseases.
Under these grants, Galapagos and BioFocus DPI will collaborate in consortia with academia, R&D institutes and companies. Galapagos is to receive the following amounts over the duration of the grants:
*Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â EUR 2.9 million from the SmartMix program through the Dutch
 Ministries of Economic Affairs and Education, Culture and Science.
 This eight-year program will focus on developing new disease models
 to speed up the drug discovery process in bone and joint diseases.
 The technology developed under the program aims to increase the
 success rate through to clinical Phase II Proof-of-Concept and
 reduce the time to get candidate drugs into the clinic.
*Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â EUR 1.5 million from the Dutch foundation Top Institute
 Pharma to identify novel cancer drugs. Galapagos will collaborate
 with Dutch biotechnology company Agamyxis, the University Medical
 Center Utrecht and the Hubrecht Institute in a four-year program.
*Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â EUR 0.8 million for two programs from the EU's 6th and 7th
 Research Framework Programmes. The goal of each of these
 three-year projects is to develop high-throughput assays to study
 cancer progression and develop anti-cancer compounds in a time and
 cost effective manner.
"These grants enable us to accelerate our internal discovery activities in bone and joint diseases and also to apply our technologies in other areas of unmet medical need", said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos. "The continued government support has helped Galapagos to become a leader in bone and joint disease research and a global provider of cutting-edge drug discovery services."
About Galapagos
Galapagos (Euronext Brussels, GLPG; Euronext Amsterdam, GLPGA; London AiM: GLPG) is a drug discovery company with pre-clinical programs in bone and joint diseases and cachexia. Its division BioFocus DPI offers a full suite of target-to-drug discovery products and services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, encompassing target discovery and validation, screening and drug discovery through to delivery of pre-clinical candidates. BioFocus DPI also provides adenoviral reagents for rapid identification and validation of novel drug targets, compound libraries for drug screening as well as chemogenomics and ADMET database products to select targets and compounds. Galapagos currently employs 460 people and operates facilities in seven countries, with global headquarters in Mechelen, Belgium. More information about Galapagos and BioFocus DPI can be found at www.glpg.com and www.biofocusdpi.com.
About SmartMix
SmartMix is a Dutch subsidy program that supports innovators who work together. SmartMix encourages economic, civil-societal and cultural innovation that will enable the Netherlands to excel both nationally and internationally. Companies and/or civil-society organisations will work together with knowledge institutes like universities on a very broad range of subjects to realise this, on the basis of questions from the market and society. The idea for SmartMix came from the Innovatieplatform (Innovation Platform). It is one of a series of funding instruments that the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science are deploying to stimulate innovation.
The SmartMix Consortium 'A new generation of efficient biomedical research tools' consists of the following participants: Universities of Leiden and Nijmegen, Amsterdam Medical Center, Amsterdam VU Medical Center, Hubrecht Institute, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck Serono, Galapagos, Arthrogen, ZF Screens, Progentix, Fytagoras and Serpo.
About TI Pharma
Top Institute Pharma aims to achieve leadership in research and education in areas that are critical for the international competitive position of the pharmaceutical industry. The Institute conducts groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary research and offers advanced training programs focused on improving the efficiency of the entire process of drug discovery and development. This will eventually reduce the 'time- & cost-to-patient' of new medicines and contribute to the well-being of society. TI Pharma devotes special attention to the Priority Medicines project of the World Health Organization. More information can be found at www.tipharma.com.
About the EU's Research Framework Programme
The primary goal of the EU Research Framework Programme is to strengthen the scientific and technological basis for the Community's industry and to foster its international competitiveness as well as to support all research efforts which are considered necessary for other policies of the Community.
CONTACT
Galapagos NV
Onno van de Stolpe, CEO
Tel: +31 6 2909 8028
[email protected]
This release may contain forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will," "could," "stands to," and "continues," as well as similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which might cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Galapagos, or industry results, to be materially different from any historic or future results, financial conditions, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Given these uncertainties, the reader is advised not to place any undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of publication of this document. Galapagos expressly disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements in this document to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, unless required by law or regulation.