Galapagos was founded in 1999 as a joint venture between Crucell and Tibotec. From the start, Galapagos has operated a hybrid business model, combining internal discovery programs with service activities. In 2002 the Company raised €23.4 million in a private placement. In May 2005, the Company raised €22.4 million through its initial public offering on the Euronext Brussels (ticker symbol: GLPG) and Euronext Amsterdam (GLPGA) stock exchanges. Galapagos raised an additional €42 million through private placements in 2006 and a further €4.4 million through an equity investment by GlaxoSmithKline in July 2007. Through a Level 1 ADR listing in the US, Galapagos is traded on the U.S. OTC market under the ticker symbol GLPYY.

Service division
In October 2005 Galapagos acquired BioFocus, a drug discovery company based in Saffron Walden, UK. In June 2006 Galapagos announced the acquisition of the drug discovery operations of Discovery Partners International, forming the new drug discovery division called BioFocus DPI. In December 2006 Galapagos announced the acquisition of Inpharmatica Ltd, a privately-held drug discovery company based in the UK. In August 2008, Galapagos acquired the structure-based drug discovery business of Sareum Holdings plc. These strategic acquisitions enable BioFocus DPI to offer a full suite of target-to-candidate drug discovery products and services, encompassing target discovery and validation, screening and drug discovery through to delivery of pre-clinical candidates.

Drug discovery division
In December 2006 Galapagos acquired ProSkelia in Romainville, France, from ProStrakan via an all-share transaction. With ProSkelia, Galapagos obtained R&D operations and a product portfolio of pre-clinical products focused on bone diseases (osteoporosis and bone metastasis).

Galapagos has entered into long term alliances for the majority of its research programs with top ten pharma companies. These risk sharing alliances enable Galapagos to build a pipeline of drugs in its disease areas that is based on the proprietary targets that the Company has identified. In the bone and joint diseases Galapagos has one of the largest discovery programs in the world. The rheumatoid arthritis program is partnered with Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Johnson and Johnson subsidiary, the osteoarthritis and anti-infectives program with GSK and the osteoporosis program with Eli Lilly.

Through its alliance strategy, Galapagos is eligible to receive in excess of €1.7 billion in success-dependent downstream milestone revenues plus up to double-digit royalties on commercial products. Galapagos is progressing over 30 target-based programs in R&D, the majority of which are part of the alliances.