Galapagos and Dart Neuroscience LLC sign drug discovery and compound management agreements

Mechelen, Belgium and San Diego, USA – Galapagos NV (Euronext: GLPG) and Dart Neuroscience LLC (DNS) announced today new collaboration agreements in drug discovery and compound management. Total potential value of the contracts for Galapagos is €4.1 million (US$5.4 million) over three years.

Galapagos’ service division, BioFocus DPI, will develop a cell-based assay for DNS’s drug discovery programs for brain disorders and perform high-throughput screening and hit expansion using BioFocus DPI’s compound collections. Furthermore, BioFocus DPI will carry out compound management for DNS over the next three years.

“This collaboration maximizes several key BioFocus DPI strengths: assay development and high-throughput screening as well as compound libraries and compound management,” said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos. “We are particularly pleased that our compound management facility in San Francisco continues to help us win new contracts and clients – we have seen strong progress in development of this business in 2008.”

“We are confident that BioFocus DPI’s integrated offering will contribute to advancing our drug discovery programs focused on various aspects of cognitive dysfunction,” added Tim Tully, Chief Scientific Officer of DNS.

About Dart Neuroscience LLC
Dart Neuroscience LLC (DNS) is a private Company formed to discover new technologies and therapeutics to help maximize cognitive vitality throughout life. DNS will build on research pursued by the Dart NeuroGenomics Alliance at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 2002 to 2008 and on a Gene Discovery Platform Technology recently acquired from Helicon Therapeutics, Inc. The Company’s objective is to attract the world’s brightest scientific minds to discover fundamental improvements in brain health and cognitive function. More information about Dart Neuroscience can be found at www.dartneuroscience.com.

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 division BioFocus DPI 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 ADMET products to select compounds. Galapagos currently employs 460 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.

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