Galapagos announces
agreement worth up to €6.3 million with United States
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Mechelen, Belgium; 18 April 2007 – Galapagos NV (Euronext
& LSE: GLPG) announces today that its service division
BioFocus DPI has entered into a multi year compound management
agreement with the United States EPA. BioFocus DPI will
provide chemical procurement and compound management services
as part of the EPA’s ToxCast™ Program (Prioritization
of Environmentally Relevant Chemicals). The contract covers
a period of up to five years and has a total value of up
to €6.3 million.
Under the agreement,
which marks the first new compound management contract since
the acquisition of the DPI assets in July 2006, BioFocus
DPI will acquire, analyze, store, format and deliver specific
compounds to a variety of sites selected by the EPA. The
total size of the collection will be determined at the EPA’s
discretion.
“We are pleased
that the EPA has selected BioFocus DPI to carry out the
chemical procurement and management activities of the ToxCast™
program,” stated Onno van de Stolpe, Chief Executive
Officer of Galapagos. “The contract awarded by the
EPA resulted from a competitive contracting process, which
indicates that we are among the premier providers of compound
management services based on both capabilities and price
competitiveness.”
“The EPA is an
important new client to our compound management activities,”
stated Christopher Newton, Senior Vice President of BioFocus
DPI. “We will apply many of the same skills and processes
to this program that we have used and developed for the
NIH’s Roadmap Initiative.”
About BioFocus DPI’s compound management services
BioFocus DPI provides compound management services at its
South San Francisco site. This facility is also home to
the small molecule repository for the National Institutes
of Health Roadmap Initiative. BioFocus DPI uses state-of-the-art
equipment and sound compound handling techniques to ensure
sample integrity. Furthermore, modern manufacturing practices
ensure that screening samples are delivered in a timely
manner across a wide range of formats for high throughput
biological screening.
About Galapagos
Galapagos (Euronext
Brussels, GLPG; Euronext Amsterdam, GLPGA; London AiM: GLPG)
is a drug discovery company with clinical and pre-clinical
programs in bone and joint diseases, cachexia, and menopausal
hot flashes. 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 450 people and
operates facilities in eight 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.
CONTACT
Galapagos NV
Onno van de Stolpe, CEO
Tel: +31 6 2909 8028
ir@glpg.com
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