Galapagos creates new warrant plan

Mechelen, Belgium; 6 February 2006 - Galapagos NV (Euronext & LSE: GLPG) announced today that on 3 February 2006 its Board of Directors created 350,000 warrants under a new warrant plan for Galapagos employees, directors and consultants.

The Board of Directors of Galapagos has approved on 3 February 2006 the “Warrant Plan 2006 Belgium/The Netherlands” 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 350,000 new warrants substantially for Galapagos’ employees in Belgium and The Netherlands and in secondary order for employees of its other subsidiaries, its directors and consultants. 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 the 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 203 people, including 76 PhDs, and occupies facilities in Mechelen, Belgium, Saffron Walden, UK and Leiden, The Netherlands. The partners of Galapagos include Amgen, AstraZeneca, BASF, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Idenix, Novartis, Organon, Serono, Vertex, and Wyeth. More information about Galapagos and BioFocus can be found at www.glpg.com.

Contact Information

Onno van de Stolpe

CEO

Galapagos NV

Contact via E-mail