Galapagos Announces Natural Compounds Collaboration with LEO Pharma
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Galapagos NV has announced a first collaboration with privately-held LEO Pharma. BioFocus DPI, Galapagos' service division, will use a subset of its natural compound collection for high throughput screening, hit verification, and profiling of selected compounds for LEO Pharma's antibacterial research program.
In return, Galapagos stands to receive up to €400,000 in project fees and up to €3 million in milestone payments.
Galapagos may also receive royalties on sales of commercial products resulting from the collaboration.
The agreement with LEO Pharma marks Galapagos' first for its natural compound collection, acquired with the drug discovery activities of Discovery Partners International in July 2006.
It focuses on the discovery of antibacterial agents using specific targeted screens. Screens for new antibiotics are particularly appropriate for natural product discovery.
"We are pleased with this new collaboration in many ways," said Onno van de Stolpe, Chief Executive Officer of Galapagos.
"Not only do we initiate a relationship with LEO Pharma, but we also confirm the interest from the market for our newly-acquired natural compounds collection and technologies by landing this high-value deal within only a few months after closing the DPI transaction."
"We at LEO Pharma are delighted to enter into this collaboration with BioFocus DPI and expect that gaining access to their significant repository of natural product subfractions will strengthen our antibiotic drug discovery program."
"We trust this will be the start of a successful and long term arrangement to discover new pharmaceutical natural products," said Dr. Tore Duvold, Vice President for Drug Discovery at LEO Pharma.
