Galapagos NV announced that its affiliate, Argenta Discovery 2009 Limited, has entered into a drug discovery service agreement with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV (Janssen), aimed at delivering novel cancer drug candidates. Argenta will provide medicinal chemistry and biology for a number of Janssen oncology targets. The total contract value for Galapagos for the initial phase of the collaboration could exceed €33.5 M over a five-year period pending the achievement of certain milestones.

This fully integrated drug discovery service agreement calls for Argenta to perform hit-to-lead and lead optimization for a number of Janssen oncology targets, and also activities up to pre-clinical candidate selection. Janssen retains the option to extend the services beyond the initial set of targets, up to a total of 15 targets.

“We are seeing an increased demand for longer term, integrated deals in our services business, which access a variety of our drug discovery capabilities and with Argenta’s strong track record of delivering on integrated drug discovery programs, we are well positioned to meet this growing need,” said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos.

Argenta’s contract research, which includes expertise in medicinal chemistry, computer-aided drug discovery, in vitro biology, analytics, in vivo pharmacokinetics, pharmacology and world-leading respiratory models, has a strong reputation for scientific excellence.

Galapagos is a mid-size biotechnology company specialized in the discovery and development of small molecule and antibody therapies with novel modes-of-action.