Mechelen, Belgium and Leiden, The Netherlands; October 14, 2005 – Galapagos NV, a genomics-based drug discovery company, announces that an article presenting the Company’s approach to target discovery will appear in the October 15, 2005 issue of Drug Discovery Today, a top-ranking review journal in the field of drug discovery research. The paper, entitled “Biology calls the targets: combining RNAi and disease biology”, gives insight into how Galapagos applies its proprietary RNA interference (RNAi) technology. Furthermore, the article explains how this biology-driven approach can be used to functionally validate drug targets for major human diseases.

“Galapagos has built extensive expertise in using RNAi to discover and validate novel drug targets in a wide range of disease areas. Our scientists were invited to present our protein knock-down technology using adenovirus-based RNAi libraries to discover new targets in human primary cells,” said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos. “There is particularly strong interest in RNAi in the pharmaceutical industry and we believe targets identified using our approach could improve overall success rates in the drug discovery process. The confidence is underscored by the fact that our pharmaceutical partners have taken targets identified using this biology-driven strategy, forward into their internal drug discovery programs.”

About Galapagos
Galapagos is a publicly traded, genomics-based drug discovery company (Euronext Brussels, GLPG; Euronext Amsterdam, GLPGA) that has successfully discovered and validated novel targets in the bone and joint diseases - osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as in asthma and Alzheimer’s disease. Proprietary targets and compounds resulting from these programs are used for Galapagos’ internal drug discovery programs, combined with selected out-licensing and partnering of projects during development.
More information about Galapagos can be found at www.glpg.com.

Contact:
Galapagos NV
Onno van de Stolpe, CEO
Tel: +31 6290 98028
E-mail: onno@galapagos.be