Galapagos receives OSEO funding and Eureka innovation label

The Paris-based r&d centre of Galapagos is to receive interest-free loans worth Euro 1.2m over the next two years from the French governmental organisation OSEO for its antibody therapeutics programme with MorphoSys and SARM.

Galapagos, a Belgian drug discovery company, will use the loans to help fund the pre-clinical development of SARM's orally available small molecule drug candidate, GLPG0492, for loss of weight and muscle loss (cachexia) and the antibody alliance with MorphoSys.

The Galapagos-MorphoSys antibody alliance also has been awarded an innovation label by Eureka, a European network that enhances European competitiveness through international collaboration. This label recognises the partners' combined capabilities to generate novel antibody therapeutics, a rapidly growing market currently worth more than â"šÂ¬20bn.

Galapagos and MorphoSys are developing fully human antibodies, which are recognised as the next generation of therapeutic antibodies.

"This financing will support two highly innovative programmes which we otherwise would have had to finance internally," said Onno van de Stolpe, ceo of Galapagos.

The SARM drug candidate is scheduled to enter the clinic early next year.