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Galapagos and BASF extend research collaborations


WEBWIRE –

Mechelen, Belgium; 2 February, 2006 - Galapagos NV (Euronext & LSE: GLPG) announced today that it has extended three research collaborations into 2006 with BASF Aktiengesellschaft (NYSE & XET: BASF) in Ludwigshafen, Germany. These extensions will further progress discovery research services for BASF programmes successfully undertaken by Galapagos’ service division BioFocus in 2005. Across the various programmes, BioFocus will offer biology, synthetic and computational chemistry services, plus access to its biologically-targeted SoftFocus® Kinase and GPCR compound libraries against further BASF targets. Under the terms of the extension agreements, BASF will pay compound supply and access fees and will fund research activities. Total contract value of the extensions announced today will exceed € 700,000.

“We are delighted that BASF has chosen to extend these collaborations with BioFocus,” said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos. “We believe that our expertise in the area of kinase and GPCR biology and chemistry, together with our proprietary compound libraries, place BioFocus in an excellent position to progress BASF’s discovery programmes rapidly.”

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, 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.

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