Cambridge, UK, and Mechelen, Belgium, 2 December 2005 – Senexis Limited, a private drug development company, and Galapagos NV (Euronext & LSE: GLPG), a genomics based drug discovery company, announced today that they have expanded their collaboration to optimise Senexis’ novel inhibitors of amyloid-induced toxicity and neuroinflammation for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Galapagos will receive research fees for the medicinal chemistry services provided to Senexis. The collaboration aims to significantly advance Senexis’ small molecule Alzheimer’s programs towards the clinic and is unrelated to Galapagos’ own Alzheimer’s disease targets program.
“We are delighted to continue our successful collaboration with BioFocus,” said David Scopes, Senexis’ Chief Scientific Officer. “We have now made significant progress with our small molecule programmes, so that our lead series now demonstrate similar potency to peptides when inhibiting amyloid-induced toxicity.”
Onno van de Stolpe, Galapagos’ CEO, commented: “We are pleased that BioFocus has been able to help advance Senexis’ Alzheimer’s program, and offering our medicinal chemistry expertise should further help to accelerate their development program.”
About Senexis
Senexis is a drug development company, dedicated to the discovery of effective treatments and diagnostics for major ageing-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s dementia, type II diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. It is now widely believed that the misfolding and aggregation of amyloid-like proteins underlies the pathologies of these different diseases. Senexis has discovered potent and selective compounds that protect cells and tissues from the toxic forms of amyloid. Senexis is funded by BTG plc and the Wellcome Trust. Further information on Senexis can be found at www.senexis.com.
About Galapagos
Galapagos is a publicly traded, genomics-based drug discovery company (Euronext Brussels, GLPG; Euronext Amsterdam, GLPGA, London AiM: GLPG) that has drug discovery programs based on proprietary, novel targets in the bone and joint diseases – osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Galapagos offers a full suite of target-to-drug discovery products and services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies through its division BioFocus, encompassing target discovery and validation, and drug discovery services through to delivery of pre-clinical candidates. In addition, BioFocus provides adenoviral reagents for rapid identification and validation of novel drug targets and compound libraries for screening. Galapagos currently employs 203 people, including 76 PhDs, and occupies facilities in Mechelen, Belgium, Saffron Walden, UK and Leiden, The Netherlands. The partners of Galapagos include Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Idenix, Novartis, Organon, Serono, Vertex, and Wyeth. More information about Galapagos and BioFocus can be found at www.glpg.com.