MECHELEN, BELGIUM--(Marketwire - 02/04/11) - Mechelen, Belgium; 4 February 2011 - Galapagos NV (Euronext: GLPG) announced today that it has regained worldwide rights for all assets developed in its strategic alliances with Merck & Co, Inc. (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada) through an affiliate, and that the alliances will end. Merck will make a payment of EUR12 million to Galapagos for work completed in 2010.
Including the payment of EUR12 million, Galapagos will have received a total of EUR20.9 million in upfront and milestone payments derived from the alliances. Galapagos has regained worldwide rights to the targets discovered and assays developed from the collaboration.
“In the alliances with Merck, we have discovered promising targets and developed target discovery assays for diseases with considerable unmet medical needs. Galapagos now owns these valuable assets which can form the basis for future alliances,” said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos. “The work delivered to Merck last year also made a strong contribution to Galapagos’ financial results in 2010.” “Changes in our early discovery strategy have required us to make some challenging decisions,” said Kathleen Metters, Senior Vice President, External Discovery and Preclinical Sciences, at Merck. “We look forward to investigating alternate opportunities to collaborate with Galapagos in the future.”
About Galapagos’ assays and validated targets in metabolic, cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases Galapagos applied its expertise in working with disease-relevant human primary cells to develop high throughput assays capable of identifying promising protein targets and small molecules that modify the disease process. For diabetes and obesity, these include glucose and glycogen metabolism and an insulin secretion assay in human primary cells. For atherosclerosis Galapagos identified and characterized targets that suppress LDL (bad cholesterol) and enhance HDL (good cholesterol) levels. In addition Galapagos screened a certain type of lung cell to identify and validate targets that suppress a factor believed to be important in inflammatory disease.
About Galapagos
Galapagos (Euronext: GLPG; OTC: GLPYY) is a mid-size biotechnology company specialized in the discovery and development of small molecule and antibody therapies with novel modes-of-action. The Company is progressing one of the largest pipelines in biotech, with seven clinical and over 50 discovery programs. Through risk/reward-sharing alliances with GlaxoSmithKline, Lilly, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Roche and Servier, Galapagos is eligible to receive up to EUR2.5 billion in downstream milestones, plus royalties. The Galapagos Group has over 800 employees and operates facilities in seven countries, with global headquarters in Mechelen, Belgium. More info at: www.glpg.com
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CONTACT Galapagos NV Onno van de Stolpe CEO Tel: +31 6 2909 8028 Email Contact Elizabeth Goodwin Director Investor Relations Tel: +31 6 2291 6240
