Galapagos in natural compounds collaboration with LEO Pharma
Belgian genomics-based drug discovery company Galapagos has entered into a first collaboration with Denmark-based LEO Pharma, a leader in dermatology treatments and critical care.
Belgian genomics-based drug discovery company Galapagos has entered into a first collaboration with Denmark-based LEO Pharma, a leader in dermatology treatments and critical care.
BioFocus DPI, Galapagos' service division, will use a subset of its natural compound collection for high throughput screening, hit verification, and profiling of selected compounds for LEO Pharma's antibacterial research programme. In return, Galapagos stands to receive up to Euro 400,000 in project fees and up to €3m in milestone payments. Galapagos may also receive royalties on sales of commercial products resulting from the collaboration.
The agreement with LEO Pharma marks Galapagos' first for its natural compound collection, acquired with the drug discovery activities of Discovery Partners International in July 2006. It focuses on the discovery of new antibacterial agents using specific targeted screens. Screens for new antibiotics are particularly appropriate for natural product discovery.
'We are delighted to enter into this collaboration with BioFocus DPI and expect that gaining access to their significant repository of natural product subfractions will strengthen our antibiotic drug discovery programme, said Dr Tore Duvold, vice president for drug discovery at LEO Pharma. We trust this will be the start of a successful and long term arrangement to discover new pharmaceutical natural products.'