Henry Gosebruch, who has $3.5 billion in capital to deploy, is thinking broad as he steers the decades-old biotech out of years of turmoil.
Galapagos CEO Henry Gosebruch truly has a clean slate to work with in rebuilding the storied—but chronically unlucky—company.
Brought in last year to replace Paul Stoffels, who made multiple attempts to right the ship, Gosebruch’s mandate is to find a whole new direction. The company has suffered from a series of clinical failures, FDA rejections, restructuring and leadership changes. He has cash—about €3 billion ($3.5 billion)—and the board’s backing to find whatever asset, technology or disease area he wants.
“On the one hand, it’s like, well, what’s it going to be? But on the other hand, that’s the beauty of what we have, that we can be much more broad in our thinking and really just look at the best opportunity,” Gosebruch told BioSpace on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference last week.
This wide-open opportunity is what attracted Gosebruch in the first place—even if the role he was originally offered was quite different. He was brought into the fold in April 2025 to head a proposed spin-out company that would build a brand new pipeline. Barely a month later, the company reversed course on the spin-out idea and announced Stoffels’ departure. Gosebruch instead became CEO of the original Galapagos entity, which would carry on the mission of finding a new pipeline.
Later, Galapagos ditched the cell therapy assets that Stoffels had been carefully curating over his nearly five-year term through a series of acquisitions. Explaining the decision to back off cell therapy, Gosebruch said it was a long time coming. The investment needed would have been too great to advance the technology far enough to be competitive. Gosebruch said it would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Those conversations were happening well before Gosebruch arrived, but they intensified in the past year. On January 5, the board officially announced the wind-down of cell therapy at Galapagos. Galapagos originally intended to find partners for the existing programs, which include the Phase II CD19 CAR T GLPG5101 for blood cancer, but that has not materialized.
“We’re continuing to be open, but at this point, nobody’s come forward, really, with a proposal that makes sense to pursue,” Gosebruch said.
New Outlook
Of his predecessor Stoffels, Gosebruch expressed his admiration and said the board made the decision to part ways.
“Paul for many, many years and I have a lot of respect, but he was very, very focused on cell therapy,” Gosebruch explained. “That was sort of his mission, to bring this set of programs to patients. And I think, given how focused he was on that particular mission, I think he was not focused on opening up to other potential opportunities.”
Gosebruch, on the other hand, has an open mind: “My approach will be that I’m not wedded to one area over another; I’m going to be looking more broadly.”
Galapagos does have a legacy pipeline consisting of one molecule, a TYK2 small molecule for immunology called GLPG3667. It’s “the one program that survived from the sort of olden days,” Gosebruch said. The therapy is currently being tested in Phase II trials for systemic lupus erythematosus and dermatomyositis.
But GLPG3667 may not ultimately stay in Galapagos’ hands either, Gosebruch said.
“Now we are thinking about, given that we don’t have the broad development team anymore, we don’t have the big infrastructure anymore that we had back in the day, does it make sense for us to rebuild around that asset, or does it make sense for us to work with a partner who may already have that?”
No ‘Synergy’ Here
The new CEO was tight lipped on what he wants to bring into Galapagos. He noted that, at the J.P. Morgan conference, he had “a very packed calendar of BD discussions.” He was also meeting with investors to explain the company’s new focus.
Immunology and inflammation and solid tumors are likely candidates and would match Galapagos’ historical focus.
“I’d love to find a way to still see that vision through,” the CEO said. “And I think there are some very exciting opportunities in immunology.” Gosebruch also spent time at I&I king AbbVie, so assets in this area would be complimentary to his experience, while solid tumors would fit in with long-time partner Gilead.
Galapagos still has strong ties with Gilead, which has a major investment in the biotech. Gosebruch said the relationship is strong and that he spent time with the pharma’s leadership even before accepting the role to understand what they want out of the partnership. He doesn’t think Gilead will simply hand off a program to Galapagos—the goal is to spend the capital on hand to find new opportunities, Gosebruch said.
Gosebruch added that the company has a team exploring China for opportunities, just like many peers across the biopharma industry. “I think it’s—I’m going to use the word required—actually,” Gosebruch said. “If you want to do BD these days, you have to be in China, at least to understand what’s the competitive landscape.”
One important piece of leverage that Galapagos has in business development discussions is that the biotech has shrunk down over the past year via layoffs. After the cell therapy restructuring is complete, Gosebruch estimated the remaining workforce will be about 35-40 people. So a whole company could join Galapagos without risk of layoffs—which commonly happen after a merger.
“One of the things we can offer to a potential transaction party is that if there’s a strong R&D team or a strong commercial team, they could, as a full team, come to Galapagos and be our team going forward,” Gosebruch said. “There won’t be any synergy.”
Gosebruch didn’t write off any potential diseases or opportunities and said he plans to be thoughtful—while acknowledging that investors have been very patient amid the restructuring.
“I’d rather take more time, be patient and wait for the right opportunity to come our way than rush into anything.”
