Our Ambition

Informed by the results of our materiality assessment and following the transfer of the Jyseleca® business to Alfasigma in 2024, we have reviewed our sustainability targets, prioritized identified impacts, risks and opportunities, and set our goals for 2028 as depicted in the diagram below.

Our call for action by 2028

To support our ambitions, we are focused on establishing relevant and measurable targets and key performance indicators to track and demonstrate our progress. In 2025, we plan to take further steps to align our sustainability strategy with our planned, future streamlined organization as described in the Strategy to unlock value section of this report. Our efforts will focus on identifying key metrics to effectively track and reflect our progress toward achieving our 2028 goals.

Add more years of life and quality of life for patients

In a world where remarkable advances in medicine have been made, there remains a significant need for patients with hard-to-treat diseases to have improved, and broader access to, additional innovative medicines. We are united by our vision to transform patient outcomes for more years of life and better quality of life across the globe.

Our mission is clear and ambitious: to accelerate transformational innovation by relentlessly pursuing groundbreaking science with an entrepreneurial spirit and a collaborative mindset.

First and foremost, we work with and for patients. They are the first consideration in every decision we make. By understanding their unique needs and challenges, we can make a lasting positive impact on their lives. Together, every day, we are driven by a shared purpose to make a meaningful difference in their lives.

Innovation is in our DNA and our commitment to patients fuels our desire to continue to innovate. By thinking boldly and challenging the status quo, we can drive groundbreaking scientific innovations that positively impact the lives of patients around the world. Through continuous learning, we aim to be at the forefront of scientific discovery, driving positive change in healthcare.  

We are empowered to take responsibility for our actions and hold ourselves to the highest standards of quality and integrity. By setting ambitious goals and striving for continuous improvement, we create a culture of excellence and expertise. We build trust with our stakeholders and ensure that we deliver on our commitments.

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2024 Actions

We built a growing R&D pipeline of more than 20 potential best-in-class medicines that address high unmet needs of patients in oncology and immunology: 

• Four assets are in clinical development across 11 indications (three in cell therapy and one small molecule), and
• More than 15 programs across modalities are in preclinical development

Develop therapies with patients and the healthcare community to address unmet patient needs

We have established our Patient Partnership Charter, which we co-created with the patient community. This charter formalizes our commitment to patient engagement and serves as a guideline to execute our patient engagement roadmap.

We strive to maintain clear and continuous communication with patients and the healthcare community.

To accelerate innovation, we collaborate closely with patient organizations throughout the entire drug development process, more notably during the initial phases when the target product profile is defined and a blueprint for a new medicine is developed, and in a next phase when we design our clinical trials.

The Galapagos Patient Engagement Council, co-founded with members of umbrella patient organizations, is another key element of our patient engagement strategy and serves as a consultative body and knowledge exchange platform that guides our results-oriented patient engagement initiatives.

2024 Actions

• We strengthened relationships with key umbrella patient organizations in the field of lupus and dermatomyositis and set up new partnerships with several umbrella patient organizations in the field of oncology.
• We established an insights-gathering process for multiple hematological cancers, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma including mantle cell lymphoma, as well as Richter transformation, a rare and very aggressive form of lymphoma, with the aim to better understand the needs of patients and care partners. This process ensures greater integration of these insights into our drug development strategy, from defining the target product profile to clinical studies.
• We continued to enhance our internal processes, including those related to quality, to ensure we comply with the highest quality standards for all our stakeholders.
• We incorporated the health literacy principles into our documents for participants of our clinical studies and patients in general.
• We prepared the organization to systematically include diverse patients into our clinical trials.

Bring our medicines to the broadest patient population possible

We are committed to executing our strategic roadmap to bring transformational medicines to the broadest patient population possible. Our goal is not just to meet current medical needs but to anticipate and shape the future of healthcare, ensuring that our innovations reach those who need them most.

2024 Actions

• We expanded our decentralized manufacturing network with strategic partnerships to scale up our manufacturing capacity in key regions to reach a broader patient population.
• Read more about our decentralized platform in this section of the report.

Be a diverse, equitable and inclusive, and trusted organization

We are committed to fostering a working environment that demonstrates a culture of business conduct that instills trust from society and motivates employees, driven by our values and principles. As we continue to channel and promote innovation within our industry and our products, we believe that diversity of talent and perspectives are imperative to unlocking sustainable business value and as identified in our double materiality assessment, we have re-established diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) as a strategic priority. We have assigned dedicated leads and sponsors to drive progress toward our 2028 goal of creating a workplace culture where everyone is empowered to thrive, and demographics do not predict success. 

At Galapagos, we hold ourselves to the highest standards of ethics and corporate responsibility. We ensure that our business decisions are thoughtful and align with the best interests of patients, people, and the planet. We build trust with our stakeholders, both internally and externally, by providing transparent updates on our progress – both when we succeed and when improvements are needed.

2024 Actions

• We continued to strengthen a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) through the conduct of focus groups to gain insights on what matters to our workforce regarding this topic.
• We launched our new company values, determined by input from the workforce, to reinforce our company culture and enhance employee well-being.
• We launched a new online training on Speak-Up/Listen-Up for all our employees and also integrated a specific training for Line Managers into our broader leadership training programs along with a training on Ethical Decision Making.
• We rolled out our updated Code of Conduct, which includes a new chapter on the United Nations Global Compact commitments and 94% of our employees completed the related training.
• We expanded our Third Party Risk Assessment (TPRA) process to include due diligence for environmental sustainability. 
• We conducted an external screening of our 100 preferred suppliers, assessing various risk factors, including ESG indicators.

Transition into a low carbon organization

At Galapagos, we believe that the health of our planet and the health and well-being of our people are interconnected.

As climate change was identified as a material topic for us, we set a clear aspiration to support our environmental ambitions and transition into a low-carbon organization by 2028. To achieve this goal, we developed a five-year roadmap in line with the Paris Agreement, that includes a balanced mix of carbon reduction projects. We will continue to monitor our performance to ensure ongoing progress toward that 2028 ambition. Additionally, to be in closer alignment with the EU's climate targets and comply with the European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS), we have also set and will disclose GHG emission reduction targets for the year 2030. Read more in the E1 Climate change section of this report.

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a critical success factor in our approach, and our climate transition roadmap includes three pathways to achieve that:

• Shift to renewable energy sources across our facilities and car fleet;
• Improve energy efficiency of our operations; and
• Drive behavioral change by increasing environmental awareness among our employees.

Actions 2024

• We obtained 59% of our energy from renewable sources.
• We increased the number of electric vehicles in our fleet and 47% of our total car fleet is now electric.
• We celebrated United Nations’ World Environment Day with our colleagues, along with other internal initiatives to drive behavioral change and raise environmental awareness.