Galapagos aquires Sareum's drug discovery assets
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
Galapagos, the Belgian drug discovery company, is to acquire the structure-based drug discovery assets of UK-based Sareum for €695,000. Galapagos will acquire all of Sareum's ongoing structure-based drug discovery services contracts, a set of protein target structures called the Crystal Bank, a fragment screening library and equipment needed to perform structure-based drug discovery. Sareum's structure-based platform uses X-ray crystallography to discover chemical fragments for recombination, which the company says has accelerated drug discovery in many of its programmes. Galapagos said the assets would strengthen the position of its service division BioFocus DPI and that the acquisition would contribute slightly to the subsidiary's revenue target for this year. The Belgian company has reiterated its full year revenue guidance of €75-80 million. BioFocus DPI will also acquire five of Sareum's employees to operate the platform. Sareum began considering the sale of all or part of its business in May after it began a review of its operations amid difficult trading (ScripOnline, May 7th, 2008).