AMGEN, GALAPAGOS EXTEND DRUG-DISCOVERY COLLABORATION

Belgian drugmaker Galapagos has announced that its service division, BioFocus DPI, has expanded and extended its longstanding drug discovery collaboration with Amgen through 2007 and 2008. BioFocus will continue to provide biology, computational and medicinal chemistry services and will supply biologically directed library compounds to Amgen's discovery programs.

Under the terms of the extended agreement, Galapagos will receive an upfront fee of $2.4 million as a payment for 2007 research costs. Additionally, Galapagos may receive compensation in the form of library and technology access fees, research fees, milestone payments and bonuses.

The initial collaboration, announced in 2003, involves the identification of lead candidates against multiple ion channel targets. The new agreement expands this collaboration to include all classes of targets, including ion channel, GPCR and kinase targets. Additionally, the agreement has been expanded to include the supply of BioFocus DPI's compound collection comprising 700,000 synthetic small molecules and its proprietary natural product compound collection containing 145,000 pre-purified subfractions, pure natural products, and semi-synthetic natural products.