Celgene
and Galapagos Enter Target Discovery Collaboration
Warren,
NJ and Mechelen, Belgium, November 18th, 2004 – Celgene
(NASDAQ: CELG), a leading global biopharmaceutical company
with focus on the discovery, development and commercialization
of innovative therapies for unmet medical needs in cancer
and inflammatory disease, and Galapagos, Europe’s
leading target discovery and adenoviral services company,
today announced that they have entered into a multi-year
target discovery collaboration.
Under the terms of the agreement, Galádeno (Galapagos’
wholly owned services unit) will provide Celgene with its
adenoviral siRNA and cDNA libraries, SilenceSelect ™
and FLeXSelect ™. These libraries enable the knock-down
or over-expression of the human drugable genome in human
primary cell assays. Celgene will use these libraries across
Celgene’s research programs to study key disease pathways
and identify novel drug targets. Financial terms of the
agreement were not disclosed.
“Galádeno is unique in the siRNA field right
now, due to their in depth experience of not only providing
tools, but also applying them in complex biological assays,”
said Celgene’s CSO, Dr. David Stirling. “This
expertise, combined with their robust technology platform
gives us confidence regarding the discovery prospects for
this collaboration.”
“We are delighted to be working with Celgene which
is one of the most exciting biopharmaceutical companies
in their field,” said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos.
“We are also very pleased that Celgene has joined
the growing number of companies that have chosen to use
our adenoviral siRNA and gene expression technologies to
drive their target and drug discovery effort.”
About Celgene Corporation
Celgene, as a leader in global biotechnology, has built
an integrated discovery, development and commercialization
platform for drug and cell-based therapies that enables
the company to continue to develop value within its therapeutic
franchise areas of cancer and inflammatory diseases. This
target-to-therapeutic platform integrates both small molecule
and cell-based therapies and spans the critical functions
required to generate a large and diverse pipeline of innovative
next generation drugs and cell therapies that address the
source of the disease and not just the symptoms.
More information on Celgene can be found at www.celgene.com.
About Galapagos Genomics NV
Galapagos is a genomics based drug discovery company with
programs in osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis,
Alzheimer's disease and asthma. Proprietary targets and
compounds resulting from Galapagos’ programs are both
developed internally and selectively out-licensed. Galádeno,
Galapagos’ services unit, provides reagents and functional
screens to leading pharmaceutical, biotech and nutraceutical
companies for rapid identification and validation of novel
drug targets. Galapagos currently employs 70 people, including
22 PhD's, and occupies a discovery research facility in
Mechelen, Belgium, and a reagent and services business unit
in Leiden, The Netherlands. Partners include Bayer, Boehringer
Ingelheim, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Procter &
Gamble, Vertex and Wyeth. Galapagos was founded in 1999
by Crucell (Nasdaq, Euronext: CRXL) and Tibotec to exploit
Crucell's unique PER.C6® technology for target discovery.
The shareholders include Abingworth, Apax, Burrill, AlpInvest,
Crucell and Tibotec-Virco.
More information about Galapagos can be found at www.galapagosgenomics.com.
Contact:
Brian P. Gill
Director PR/IR
Celgene Corporation
+ 1(732) 652-4530
Onno van de Stolpe, CEO
+31 6290 980 28
onno@galapagos.be
