Mechelen, Belgium; 14 January 2009 – Galapagos NV (Euronext: GLPG) announced today achievement of multiple milestones under its alliance with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV (‘Janssen’). Through the achievement of the milestone payments announced today Galapagos will receive a total of €3.75 million.
In October 2007, Galapagos announced an alliance agreement with Janssen providing Janssen with option rights to acquire worldwide, commercial licenses to novel small-molecules from up to 12 of Galapagos’ internal programs involving rheumatoid arthritis (RA) therapeutic targets. The milestones announced today relate to achievement of Proof of Principle for compounds developed against Galapagos targets. The compounds demonstrated a reduction of an inflammatory disease biomarker in inflamed joint tissue cultured from collagen-induced arthritic mice. Showing a reduction in such a disease marker is an important step in the development of a new drug, indicating that the potential drug can have an impact on slowing or reversing disease.
About Galapagos
Galapagos (Euronext Brussels: GLPG; Euronext Amsterdam: GLPGA; OTC: GLPYY) is a drug discovery company with pre-clinical programs in bone and joint diseases and bone metastasis. 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 ADMET products to select compounds. Galapagos currently employs 460 people and operates facilities in six countries, with global headquarters in Mechelen, Belgium. More information about Galapagos can be found at www.glpg.com.
CONTACT
Galapagos NV
Graham Dixon, PhD
Senior Vice President Drug Discovery
+32 473 86 87 51
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