Galapagos tightens its focus

By the middle of this year Galapagos hopes to offer a pure-play investment case centred on cancer cell therapies. Most of the heavy lifting here will be done by GLPG5101, its locally manufactured anti-CD19 Car-T project, which is now to take on two new indications, the company told its full-year financials presentation on Thursday. This is the result of the discontinuation of another anti-CD19 Car, GLPG5201, which used a different vector and had targeted CLL and Richter transformation – two indications that will now pass to GLPG5101 in addition to that asset's lead uses in non-Hodgkin lymphomas. The decision stems from Galapagos's realisation that it would have been too expensive to build a decentralised manufacturing network for two different cell therapies that act the same way. A pivotal lymphoma trial of GLPG5101 is to begin next year, with first launch slated for 2028, Galapagos said. In the meantime the earlier announced separation from Gilead will have taken place, with Gilead's non-oncology spin-out being listed on Euronext and Nasdaq in mid-2025, backed by €2.45bn of cash. That will leave Galapagos with €500m, implying that restructuring the company will cost some €150m.