Mechelen, Belgium; 12 May 2006 - Galapagos NV (Euronext & LSE: GLPG) announced today that on 12 May 2006 its Board of Directors created 453,715 warrants under a new warrant plan for employees of its BioFocus division in the United Kingdom.

On 12 May 2006 Galapagos’ Board of Directors approved the “Warrant Plan 2006 U.K.” within the framework of the authorized capital. Since its inception in 1999, Galapagos has used warrant plans to allow personnel and management to be involved in the company’s growth and development. This new warrant plan contains a pool of 453,715 new warrants substantially for the employees of Galapagos’ service division BioFocus in the United Kingdom, and in secondary order for employees of its other subsidiaries. The warrants have an exercise period of eight years starting as of the date of each individual grant. They are not transferable and cannot be exercised prior to the end of the third calendar year after the year in which they were granted to a warrant holder. Each warrant gives the right to subscribe to one new Galapagos share. When the warrants will be exercised, Galapagos will apply for the listing of the resulting new shares. The warrants as such will not be admitted to listing on any stock market.

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 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 more than 210 people, including 80 PhDs, and occupies facilities in Mechelen, Belgium, Saffron Walden, UK and Leiden, The Netherlands. Partners of Galapagos include Amgen, AstraZeneca, BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Idenix, Novartis, Organon, Roche, Serono, Vertex, and Wyeth. More information about Galapagos and BioFocus can be found at www.glpg.com.

CONTACT

Galapagos NV
Onno van de Stolpe, CEO
Tel: +31 6 2909 8028
ir@glpg.com