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(TM) 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(TM) 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[1] 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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[1] ADMET is the acronym for Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity: meeting parameters against these five criteria is critical to the success of a pharmaceutical compound as a drug.