Galapagos has announced that its service division, BioFocus DPI, has entered into a new drug discovery collaboration with the pharmaceutical manufacturer AstraZeneca
Building upon drug discovery collaborations between the two companies, the collaboration involves BioFocus DPI performing medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry and supporting biology and ADMET services for AstraZeneca's Infection discovery program based in Boston, USA.
Total contract value for Galapagos will be euros 680,000.
This announcement marks the third collaboration between AstraZeneca and BioFocus DPI.
In August 2006, Galapagos announced BioFocus DPI's first drug discovery collaboration with AstraZeneca.
Under a second programme initiated in April 2007, BioFocus DPI is performing chemistry and supporting biology and ADME services for an AstraZeneca hit-to-lead programme.
While these collaborations focused on AstraZeneca's European based R+D, the new agreement expands BioFocus DPI's drug discovery services to AstraZeneca's US based R+D.
"We now have a global relationship with AstraZeneca, working with several sites based in Europe and the US", said Galapagos' CEO, Onno van de Stolpe.
"This type of expansion fits very well with our strategy for growth of the BioFocus DPI service division.
"Our European colleagues have been pleased with the progress of the drug discovery programmes ongoing with BioFocus DPI.
"The decision for our US based R+D to enter into this collaboration with BioFocus DPI is based on this productivity and the good working relationship between the two companies thus far", added Trevor Trust, vice president - Infection Discovery at AstraZeneca US.
BioFocus DPI offers a full suite of target-to-drug discovery products and services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, encompassing target discovery and validation, screening and drug discovery through to delivery of pre-clinical candidates.
BioFocus DPI also provides adenoviral reagents for rapid identification and validation of novel drug targets, compound libraries for drug screening as well as chemogenomics and ADMET database products to select targets and compounds.
