Galapagos and CHDI Enter new Collaboration Agreements

Galapagos NV and CHDI Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization pursuing treatments for Huntington's disease (HD), announced new collaboration agreements focused on developing assays for drug discovery and evaluating known compounds as potentially new therapeutic approaches for HD. Total value of the contracts for Galapagos is $1 million (€0.8 million) over 1.5 years.

Galapagos' service division, BioFocus DPI, will develop a high throughput screening assay in mouse neurons that will enable the identification of compounds that prevent neuronal dysfunction associated with HD. BioFocus DPI will also make use of its expertise in profiling and assay development to evaluate known compounds inhibiting certain enzymes playing key roles in HD. These new programs continue the collaboration started in August 2005.

"The new programs initiated with CHDI demonstrate how innovative BioFocus DPI is in its drug discovery expertise," said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos. "With its growing list of patient organizations in the client base, our service division continues to build on its reputation for high quality drug discovery."

"Galapagos demonstrated its capabilities in our target discovery collaboration, which encouraged us to choose BioFocus DPI for these new programs," added Ignacio Munoz, Vice-President of Biology at CHDI.