Galapagos NV, an integrated drug discovery company, announced closure on the acquisition of all the drug discovery operations of Discovery Partners International (DPI) for €4.25 million in cash. With this, the acquired assets of DPI have now become an integral part of Galapagos' service division BioFocus DPI.

Galapagos acquired the operational activities of DPI as part of its strategy to become a worldwide leader in drug discovery services, ranging from target discovery to the delivery of candidate drugs. The acquired operations include DPI's drug discovery services sites San Diego and South San Francisco (USA), Basel (Switzerland) and Heidelberg (Germany) as well as DPI's Japanese sales office in Tokyo. These operations strengthen and broaden the BioFocus product offering and global presence, propelling the new BioFocus DPI group to a Top 5 position worldwide in the drug discovery market.

The acquisition also provides Galapagos with additional capacity to deliver on its broad drug discovery and development alliance in osteoarthritis with GlaxoSmithKline, announced in June 2006. Based on this acquisition, Galapagos has increased its revenue guidance for 2006 from €25-30 million to €33-38 million.