Galapagos establishes strategic collaboration with BridGene Biosciences to expand small molecule drug discovery in oncology

• Strategic collaboration and licensing agreement further strengthens Galapagos’ growing early-stage pipeline in oncology precision medicine
• Collaboration leverages Galapagos’ expertise in small molecule drug discovery and development with BridGene’s innovative discovery platform for “hard-to-drug” targets
• Galapagos to pay up to $27 million in upfront and preclinical milestone payments to BridGene

Mechelen, Belgium; 3 January 2024, 22:01 CET; Galapagos NV (Euronext & NASDAQ: GLPG) today announced that it has entered into a strategic collaboration and licensing agreement with BridGene Biosciences, Inc. (“Bridgene”), a biotechnology company that uses proprietary chemoproteomics technology to discover novel small molecule drug candidates.

Through this collaboration, Galapagos and BridGene aim to discover and develop new precision medicines against clinically validated oncology targets by leveraging Galapagos’ expertise in small molecule drug discovery and translational research along with BridGene’s proprietary IMTAC chemoproteomics platform. The parties will advance the molecules into clinical candidates, and Galapagos has exclusive rights for further development and commercialization of any product candidates developed under the agreement.

“Our small molecule oncology strategy is focused on developing best-in-class precision medicines that have the potential to transform the lives of cancer patients, and today’s announcement has the potential to accelerate that objective,” said Pierre Raboisson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Head of Small Molecules Discovery at Galapagos. “We are very pleased to announce this preclinical research collaboration with BridGene, which has a strong track record in small molecule drug discovery for challenging targets. We look forward to working together and leveraging the unique capabilities of each company with the goal of developing transformative medicines to address high unmet medical needs of cancer patients.”

Under the terms of the agreement, BridGene will receive from Galapagos up to $27 million in upfront and preclinical research milestone payments and potentially over $700 million in clinical and commercial milestones, assuming success of the programs. In addition, BridGene will be entitled to receive single-digit tiered royalties on net sales of each product resulting from the collaboration.