BioFocus announced today that its Compound Focus subsidiary has signed an agreement with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Under the terms of the  agreement, BioFocus will provide compound management services to NCI for a base period of three years for a total of up to $5 million (€3.7 M), with two one-year extension options.

BioFocus runs a compound management facility for a number of industrial and U.S. government customers out of its Compound Focus, Inc. subsidiary in South San Francisco.  Under the agreement announced today, Compound Focus will establish a Small Molecule Repository for the NCI Chemical Biology Consortium (CBC).  This repository will form part of the CBC’s drug discovery and development platform for new oncology therapeutics being researched by a consortium of primarily academic institutions.  The base three year contract is funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds.

“We are pleased to welcome the National Cancer Institute as a new collaborator.  Compound Focus has done very well to expand its long-standing relationship with the NIH into this new project with the NCI,” said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos.  “Our compound management facility has met or exceeded its revenue objectives since we acquired it in 2006, making it a solid contributor to our service division’s revenue stream.”

About the NCI Chemical Biology Consortium (CBC)

The goal of CBC is to establish a complete drug discovery and development platform for oncology therapeutics by the formation of a new and novel network which combines academic and private drug discovery efforts with the NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis’ (DCTD) existing pre-clinical resources.  The project is funded in whole with U.S. Federal funds from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under contract HHS-N-261-2010-00079C with Compound Focus, Inc.

About Compound Focus

Compound Focus, Inc. is part of the Galapagos service division BioFocus and provides a range of compound management services.  It is home to sample collections owned by government, academic and commercial organizations and to the National Institutes of Health Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository.  BioFocus aims to expand its partners’ drug pipelines by accelerating the gene-to-drug candidate discovery process.  This is achieved through a comprehensive discovery platform, which includes target discovery in human primary cells, focused as well as diverse compound libraries, in vitro and cell-based screening, structural biology, medicinal chemistry, ADME/PK services, supported by unique chemogenomic and informatics tools, and compound library acquisition, storage and distribution services.  As a service division of Galapagos, BioFocus has over 250 employees in four countries worldwide.