Mechelen, Belgium;
22 July 2008 – Galapagos NV (Euronext: GLPG) announced
today that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)
have extended their agreement with Galapagos’ service
division BioFocus DPI for the operation of the Molecular
Libraries Small Molecule Repository (MLSMR) until December
2010. According to the terms of this agreement, Galapagos
will receive more than $9 million (€5.7 million) over
the course of the two year extension.
BioFocus DPI runs a compound
management facility for a number of industrial and U.S.
government customers out of its Compound Focus, Inc. subsidiary
in South San Francisco. Home to the MLSMR since 2004, this
facility acquires and stores compounds under the contract
with NIH and distributes these compounds for high-throughput
biological screening throughout the NIH’s academic
network in the U.S.
“We are pleased that
the NIH has elected to continue working with BioFocus DPI.
Through this extended agreement, the compound management
facility has once again demonstrated that it is a leading
provider of these services,” said Onno van de Stolpe,
CEO of Galapagos.
About the Molecular
Libraries Small Molecule Repository (a Roadmap initiative)
The NIH MLSMR collects samples for high throughput biological
screening and distributes them to the NIH Molecular Libraries
Screening Center Network. MLSMR is a key component of the
Molecular Libraries Initiative, a NIH Roadmap project supporting
‘new pathways to discovery in the 21st century’.
The project is funded in whole with U.S. Federal funds from
the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health
and Human Services, under contract HHS-N-278-2004-41001C
with Compound Focus, Inc.
About Galapagos
and BioFocus DPI
Galapagos (Euronext Brussels: GLPG; Euronext Amsterdam:
GLPGA; OTC: GLPYY) is a drug discovery company with pre-clinical
programs in bone and joint diseases and bone metastasis.
Its BioFocus DPI division offers a full suite of target-to-drug
discovery products and services to pharmaceutical and biotech
companies, encompassing target discovery and validation,
screening and drug discovery through to delivery of pre-clinical
candidates. BioFocus DPI also provides adenoviral reagents
for rapid identification and validation of novel drug targets,
compound libraries for drug screening as well as chemogenomics
and ADMET database products to select targets and compounds.
Galapagos currently employs
470 people and operates facilities in six countries, with
global headquarters in Mechelen, Belgium. More information
about Galapagos and BioFocus DPI can be found at www.glpg.com
and www.biofocusdpi.com.
CONTACT
Galapagos NV
André Hoekema, PhD
SVP Corporate Development
Tel: +31 65 151 7933
ir@glpg.com
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