BioFocus DPI and Dart Neuroscience LLC (DNS) announced today new collaboration agreements in drug discovery and compound management. Total potential value of the contracts for BioFocus DPI is €4.1 million (US$5.4 million) over three years.

BioFocus DPI, the service division of Galapagos, will develop a cell-based assay for DNS’s drug discovery programs for brain disorders and perform high-throughput screening and hit expansion using BioFocus DPI’s compound collections. Furthermore, BioFocus DPI will carry out compound management for DNS over the next three years.

“This collaboration maximizes several key BioFocus DPI strengths: assay development and highthroughput screening as well as compound libraries and compound management,” said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos. “We are particularly pleased that our compound management facility in San Francisco continues to help us win new contracts and clients – we have seen strong progress in development of this business in 2008.”

“We are confident that BioFocus DPI’s integrated offering will contribute to advancing our drug discovery programs focused on various aspects of cognitive dysfunction,” added Tim Tully, Chief Scientific Officer of DNS.

About Dart Neuroscience LLC

Dart Neuroscience LLC (DNS) is a private company formed to discover new technologies and therapeutics to help maximize cognitive vitality throughout life. DNS will build on research pursued by the Dart NeuroGenomics Alliance at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 2002 to 2008 and on a Gene Discovery Platform Technology recently acquired from Helicon Therapeutics, Inc. The Company's objective is to attract the world's brightest scientific minds to discover fundamental improvements in brain health and cognitive function.

About BioFocus DPI

BioFocus DPI aims to expand its partners’ drug pipelines by accelerating the gene-to-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 the service division of Galapagos, BioFocus DPI has over 250 employees in four countries worldwide.