MECHELEN, Belgium and LEIDEN, The Netherlands, Oct. 5, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Galapagos Genomics NV announced that it has appointed Raj Parekh, Ph.D. as Chairman and Wilson Totten, M.D. to the company's Board of Directors. "I am very pleased to have both Raj Parekh and Wilson Totten join our board at this time," said Onno van de Stolpe, Chief Executive Officer. "Their experience in building major biotechnology companies in drug discovery and development will be very valuable to Galapagos in our transition into drug discovery."
Dr. Parekh (44) is currently Entrepreneur in Residence at Abingworth, a UK venture capital company. He co-founded Oxford GlycoSciences (OGS) in 1988 and was Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Research and was instrumental in the flotation of the company in 1998 and its recent merger with Celltech.
Dr. Totten (49) is CEO of ProStrakan, a company formed by the recent merger of Strakan and Proskelia. Until recently, he was Group R&D Director at Shire. At Shire, Dr. Totten was responsible for research and drug development, and involved in all commercial aspects. Before joining Shire in 1998, he was Vice President of Clinical R&D with Astra Charnwood from 1995 to 1997. Before that Dr. Totten was Director of Drug Development for Fisons Pharmaceuticals and Medical Director at 3M Health Care.
About Galapagos Genomics NV
Galapagos Genomics is a genomics based drug discovery company with programs in osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, Alzheimer's disease and asthma. Proprietary targets and compounds resulting from Galapagos' programs are both developed internally and selectively out-licensed. Galadeno, Galapagos' services unit, provides reagents and functional screens to leading pharmaceutical, biotech and nutraceutical companies for rapid identification and validation of novel drug targets. Galapagos currently employs 78 people, including 22 PhD's, and occupies a discovery research facility in Mechelen, Belgium, and an independent reagent and services business unit in Leiden, The Netherlands. Partners include Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Johnson & Johnson, Organon, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Vertex and Wyeth. Galapagos was founded in 1999 by Crucell (Nasdaq:CRXL) (Euronext: CRXL) and Tibotec to exploit Crucell's unique PER.C6(TM) technology for target discovery. The shareholders include Abingworth Management, Apax Partners, Burrill & Company, AlpInvest Partners, Crucell Holland and Tibotec-Virco.
More information about Galapagos can be found at www.galapagosgenomics.com