Galapagos completes acquisition of drug discovery service operations of Discovery Partners International

Mechelen, Belgium; 6 July 2006 - Galapagos NV (Euronext & LSE: GLPG), an integrated drug discovery company, announced today closure on the acquisition of all the drug discovery operations of Discovery Partners International (DPI) for €4.25 million in cash. With this, the acquired assets of DPI have now become an integral part of Galapagos’ service division BioFocus DPI.

Galapagos acquired the operational activities of DPI as part of its strategy to become a worldwide leader in drug discovery services, ranging from target discovery to the delivery of candidate drugs. The acquired operations include DPI’s drug discovery services sites San Diego and South San Francisco (USA), Basel (Switzerland) and Heidelberg (Germany) as well as DPI’s Japanese sales office in Tokyo. These operations strengthen and broaden the BioFocus product offering and global presence, propelling the new BioFocus DPI group to a Top 5 position worldwide in the drug discovery market. The acquisition also provides Galapagos with additional capacity to deliver on its broad drug discovery and development alliance in osteoarthritis with GlaxoSmithKline, announced in June 2006. Based on this acquisition, Galapagos has increased its revenue guidance for 2006 from €25-30 million to €33-38 million.


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 DPI, encompassing target discovery and drug discovery services through to delivery of pre-clinical candidates. In addition, BioFocus DPI provides adenoviral reagents for rapid identification and validation of novel drug targets and compound libraries for drug screening. Galapagos currently employs more than 320 people, including 144 PhDs, and operates facilities in seven countries, with global headquarters in Mechelen, Belgium. More information about Galapagos and BioFocus DPI can be found at www.glpg.com.

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Contact Information

Onno van de Stolpe

CEO

Galapagos NV

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