BioFocus announced today that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) have extended their agreement for the operation of the Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository (MLSMR) through December 2012.  According to the terms of this agreement, BioFocus will be eligible to receive up to $8.6 million (€7.0 million) over the course of the two year extension.  

BioFocus runs a compound management facility for a number of industrial and U.S. government customers out of its Compound Focus, Inc. subsidiary in South San Francisco.  Home to the MLSMR since 2004, this facility acquires and stores compounds under the NIH contract and distributes these compounds for high-throughput biological screening throughout the NIH's academic network in the U.S.   

"We are pleased that the NIH has exercised its option to extend its long-standing collaboration with BioFocus' compound management facility for another two years.  BioFocus has proven that it consistently delivers a high-quality service across the vast NIH screening center network," said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos, BioFocus' parent company. 

About the Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository (a Roadmap initiative)

The NIH MLSMR collects samples for high throughput biological screening and distributes them to the NIH Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network.  MLSMR is a key component of the Molecular Libraries Initiative, a NIH Roadmap project supporting ‘new pathways to discovery in the 21st century'.  The project is funded in whole with U.S. federal funds from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under contract HHS-N-278-2004-41001C with Compound Focus, Inc. 

About BioFocus

BioFocus aims to expand its partners' drug pipelines by accelerating the gene-to-drug candidate discovery process.  This is achieved through a comprehensive discovery platform, which includes target discovery in human primary cells, focused as well as diverse compound libraries, in vitro and cell-based screening, structural biology, medicinal chemistry, ADME/PK services, supported by unique chemogenomic and informatics tools, and compound library acquisition, storage and distribution services.  As a service division of Galapagos, BioFocus has over 250 employees based in the UK, the US and Switzerland.  More info at: www.biofocus.com 

BioFocus^® is a trademarks of Galapagos NV and/or its affiliates © Copyright 2010 Galapagos NV.