Galapagos NV announced that it has successfully identified a third candidate drug in its arthritis alliance with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Galapagos also reached milestones for other compounds in the alliance. Together, these milestones trigger cash payments totalling €5.7 million to Galapagos.

This latest pre-clinical candidate is a small molecule that meets all the chemical and biological criteria set by GSK for a potential new medicine. Galapagos developed the candidate against a novel drug target from its proprietary platform. Galapagos will now start scale-up chemistry and comprehensive safety evaluation, with the aim to initiate Phase I clinical trials early 2011.

“We are proud to deliver the third candidate drug in the arthritis alliance with GSK,” said Onno van de Stolpe, chief executive officer of Galapagos. “Multiple candidates provide more shots on goal in terms of getting a drug to the market. It is gratifying that our discovery organization has been so successful in this alliance.”

GSK and Galapagos initiated an arthritis alliance to discover and develop disease-modifying drugs for GSK’s global R&D organization in June 2006. GSK and Galapagos have expanded the alliance three times to include additional targets and drug discovery programmes.

In its arthritis program with GSK, Galapagos has identified a number of novel targets and these have progressed into drug discovery and development. The first candidate drug from this alliance, GLPG0555, entered Phase I clinical development in December 2009. A second candidate drug from this program is currently in pre-clinical development. The candidate drug announced today will be progressed through pre-clinical development in 2010, with the goal to enter clinical trials in 2011. GSK has an exclusive option after the Phase I study to further develop and commercialize these compounds on a worldwide basis.

To date, Galapagos has earned more than €46 million in payments from GSK under this alliance.

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