Galapagos and UCB sign allergy deal

Belgium's Galapagos Genomics has entered into a collaboration with UCBResearch, a US division of the Belgian firm UCB Pharma, to evaluate "the precise function of proteins encoded by newly-discovered genes involved in allergic response."

Under the terms of the agreement, Galapagos will supply UCB with adenoviral vectors containing human genes selected by the latter's researchers and will construct the recombinant adenoviruses using its PhenoSelect expression platform. The groups noted that, prior to moving into this collaboration, they successfully completed a feasibility study in which Galapagos demonstrated the potential of its technology platform to UCB. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Onno van de Stolpe, Galapagos' chief executive, said that the collaboration "demonstrates the growing interest from the pharma and biotech industry in our proprietary adenoviral platform for target discovery and validation." He added that the deal with UCB "proves again that our system is extremely useful for rapid target validation of collections of genes."