Galapagos NV and Cancer Research Technology (CRT), specialists in oncology drug discovery and commercialisation, have entered into a new collaboration in anti-cancer drug discovery research
Galapagos's service division BioFocus will perform medicinal chemistry services on a series of CRT anti-cancer drug programmes.
In return, CRT will fund the work of four BioFocus scientists throughout 2006.
"This agreement testifies to the high quality of BioFocus's medicinal chemistry expertise and the overall competitiveness of our integrated services portfolio," said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos.
"We also are pleased to assist Cancer Research Technology in the fight against cancer".
"CRT has succeeded in forming a number of collaborative anti-cancer programmes with academic and commercial partners alike," added Tony Raynham, CRT's head of medicinal chemistry.
"Our relationship with BioFocus, in conjunction with existing in-house R+D resource, will ensure that these programmes are advanced rapidly through early-stage development, thereby creating robust licencing opportunities and cancer patient benefit".
Cancer remains one of the world's most pressing health concerns.
According to Cancer Research UK, physicians estimate that one in three people will get some form of cancer at some stage in life.
Galapagos is a publicly traded, genomics-based drug discovery company that has drug discovery programmes 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 76PhDs, and occupies facilities in Mechelen, Belgium, Saffron Walden, UK and Leiden, Netherlands.
The partners of Galapagos include Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Idenix, Novartis, Organon, Serono, Vertex, and Wyeth.
Cancer Research Technology is a specialist commercialisation and development company, which aims to develop new discoveries in cancer research for the benefit of cancer patients.
CRT works closely with leading international cancer scientists and their institutes to protect intellectual property arising from their research and to establish links with commercial partners.
CRT facilitates the discovery, development and marketing of new cancer therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostics and enabling technologies.
CRT is wholly owned by Cancer Research UK, the largest independent funder of cancer research in the world.
