Saffron Walden, UK; 11 January, 2006 - Galapagos announced today that Dr. Angus MacLeod has joined Galapagos’ service division BioFocus as Director of Medicinal Chemistry. Dr. MacLeod was previously with Merck Sharp & Dohme where he spent 21 years in medicinal chemistry, most recently as Senior Director, Medicinal Chemistry. Dr. MacLeod has one of the most impressive track records in the industry contributing to a number of programs leading to clinical candidates, including the Substance P antagonist program that resulted in the marketed product aprepitant (Emend®), and a GABA receptor modulator program. Dr. MacLeod is author/inventor on more than 100 publications and patents.

Dr. Chris Newton, Senior VP BioFocus commented, “Dr. MacLeod’s appointment is a big win for BioFocus. The most critical factors in converting a chemical lead to a clinical candidate drug are tenacity, experience, and multi-disciplinary team leadership, which Dr. MacLeod has in abundance. Dr. MacLeod joins BioFocus’ recently appointed Director of Biology, Dr. Iain James, who joined us after 17 years with Novartis. Together, Dr. MacLeod and Dr. James head up a most impressive drug discovery team, which is available to BioFocus’ worldwide clients.”

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.

CONTACT

BioFocus
Dr. Chris Newton, SVP BioFocus
Tel: +44 1799 533 535
cnewton@biofocus.com