The strip of land between Leiden, Ghent, Mechelen and Breda hosts Europe’s most productive biotech corridor outside Britain and Switzerland. argenx, the Belgian-Dutch maker of Vyvgart, booked US$4.2 billion of product sales in 2025 and its first full year of operating profit; Galapagos, once the region’s flagship, wound down its cell-therapy business, shed most of its staff and renamed itself Lakefront Biotherapeutics in 2026 with about €2.2 billion of cash still in the bank; Genmab bought Utrecht’s Merus for about US$8 billion. Pharming, the Leiden veteran, is growing its rare-disease drug Joenja but cut its 2026 guidance and lost its CEO. The corridor shows how a shared talent pool, Euronext and Nasdaq dual listings and American capital can turn small-country science into global companies, and how quickly the same forces can unwind one.
The Dutch-Belgian biotech corridor is a single ecosystem that happens to straddle a border, and its 2025 and 2026 results show both the heights and the hazards of drug development. Leiden Bio Science Park, founded in 1984, is the Netherlands’ largest life-sciences cluster with more than 215 organisations and about 19,000 workers; Ghent and Mechelen in Flanders host argenx and Galapagos; Utrecht produced Merus; and the European Medicines Agency sits in Amsterdam. This article examines four companies whose fortunes diverged sharply, explains what happened to the Galapagos-Gilead partnership, and draws out the lessons for founders and investors. It is part of the Netherlands Company Stories hub.
Why is argenx the corridor’s biggest success?
Its FcRn blocker efgartigimod, sold as Vyvgart and Vyvgart Hytrulo, is approved for generalised myasthenia gravis and CIDP and reached US$4.2 billion of 2025 product sales, up 90%, with US$1.1 billion of operating income. argenx joined the Euro Stoxx 50 in September 2025 and handed the CEO role from founder Tim Van Hauwermeiren to Karen Massey in 2026.
What went wrong at Galapagos?
Its 2019 Gilead alliance never produced a blockbuster, filgotinib was sold off, and a 2022 pivot to CAR-T cell therapy ended in an October 2025 decision to wind the business down. The company closed Leiden and other sites, cut headcount from 704 to a target of 35 to 40, and became Lakefront Biotherapeutics, a cash-rich shell hunting for assets.
What does Genmab’s purchase of Merus mean?
The roughly US$8 billion deal for the Utrecht company behind petosemtamab, a bispecific antibody for head-and-neck cancer, is one of the largest exits ever for a Dutch biotech and a reminder that the corridor’s companies are usually bought before they become independent commercial groups.
What makes Leiden, Ghent and Mechelen a single biotech corridor?
The region works as one cluster because its companies share the same investors, the same exchanges, the same regulatory gateway and often the same executives. Galapagos was founded in 1999 as a joint venture between Leiden’s Crucell and Belgium’s Tibotec; argenx was founded in 2008 in Ghent but kept its legal seat in the Netherlands as a European company (SE) with offices in Breda; Pharming has been in Leiden since 1988.
Leiden Bio Science Park is the physical anchor on the Dutch side. Spread across about 110 hectares next to Leiden University Medical Center, it hosts more than 215 organisations, including some 150 life-sciences and health companies, and about 19,000 people work there. The park’s roots lie in Centocor’s European base and in Crucell, the vaccines company that Johnson & Johnson bought in 2011 for about €1.75 billion; Janssen Vaccines still runs a major site there. On the Belgian side, Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) and the universities of Ghent and Leuven supply the science, while Mechelen, between Brussels and Antwerp, became the corporate home of Galapagos.
What ties the two halves together is capital-markets infrastructure. Euronext operates both the Amsterdam and Brussels exchanges, so a Belgian biotech can list in Brussels, be included in Amsterdam-based indices and attract the same Dutch institutional investors. All four companies in this article also listed American depositary shares on Nasdaq, which gave them access to the US specialist funds that fund most late-stage biotech worldwide. The European Medicines Agency’s move from London to Amsterdam’s Zuidas district, completed in early 2020, put the EU’s drug regulator within an hour of every company in the corridor.
The corridor’s output is unusually concentrated. argenx alone is worth more than the rest of the Belgian and Dutch listed biotech sector combined, and its market capitalisation at times exceeded that of Philips, the country’s largest health-technology company, whose own troubles are covered in the Philips Respironics article.
How did argenx turn an antibody fragment into a US$4 billion drug?
argenx built its business on a single molecule, efgartigimod, an antibody fragment that blocks the neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn) and thereby lowers the level of disease-causing IgG antibodies in the blood. The science came from the company’s founders, Tim Van Hauwermeiren, Hans de Haard and Torsten Dreier, who used llama-derived antibody technology to generate candidates that human antibody platforms missed.
The commercial breakthrough came in December 2021, when the US FDA approved Vyvgart for generalised myasthenia gravis, a rare autoimmune disease in which antibodies attack the connection between nerves and muscles. A subcutaneous formulation, Vyvgart Hytrulo, followed, and in 2024 the FDA added chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP). Japan approved the drug for immune thrombocytopenia. A pre-filled syringe that patients can self-inject was approved in April 2025 and launched in both gMG and CIDP, removing the need for infusion-centre visits.
The financial results have been steep. Preliminary 2025 global product net sales were US$4.15 billion, up 90% from 2024, including US$1.29 billion in the fourth quarter; the audited figure in the annual report is rounded to US$4.2 billion. argenx reported US$1.1 billion of operating income for 2025, its first full year of operating profit, after spending US$1.4 billion on research and development. The company says about 19,000 patients have been treated with Vyvgart and has set a “Vision 2030” target of 50,000.
Governance changed with scale. On 5 January 2026 argenx announced that Van Hauwermeiren would move from CEO to non-executive chairman and that Karen Massey, the chief operating officer, would become CEO and executive director. The stock had already joined the Euro Stoxx 50 in September 2025, making argenx the first biotech in the index of the eurozone’s largest companies.
Why did Galapagos go from flagship to shell?
Galapagos unwound because its two big bets, the Gilead alliance and cell therapy, both failed to produce a commercial franchise. The company that had once been valued above €10 billion ended 2025 with 452 employees, down from 704 a year earlier, and a plan to shrink to 35 to 40 people.
The first bet was Gilead. In July 2019 the American company agreed a ten-year research collaboration, paying US$3.95 billion upfront and investing US$1.1 billion in equity, which gave it a stake of more than 25% and the right to opt in to every Galapagos programme. The centrepiece was filgotinib, a JAK1 inhibitor for rheumatoid arthritis sold as Jyseleca. It was approved in Europe and Japan in 2020 but the FDA rejected it, Gilead handed back its rights, and in January 2024 Galapagos completed the transfer of the Jyseleca business to Italy’s Alfasigma. Royalties and earn-outs from that sale are expected to run into the mid-2030s.
The second bet was cell therapy. Paul Stoffels, the former Johnson & Johnson chief scientific officer who succeeded founder Onno van de Stolpe as CEO in 2022, bought CellPoint and AboundBio in June 2022 and pivoted to a decentralised CAR-T manufacturing model. In January 2025 the company announced a plan to split in two, with a “SpinCo” to pursue business development, and cut about 300 positions, roughly 40% of the workforce. In May 2025 Henry Gosebruch, a former AbbVie business-development head, replaced Stoffels and reopened the question; by October 2025 the board concluded that more than five months of trying to sell the cell-therapy unit had produced no viable proposal, and decided to wind it down.
What is Lakefront Biotherapeutics and what does it own?
Lakefront Biotherapeutics is the name Galapagos adopted after shareholders approved the change at an extraordinary general meeting on 28 April 2026, and it is essentially a listed pool of cash with a small pipeline and a mandate to buy clinically de-risked drug programmes. It trades on Euronext and Nasdaq under the ticker LKFT and is still headquartered in Mechelen.
The wind-down was thorough. The board started implementing it on 5 January 2026 after works-council consultations in Belgium and the Netherlands, affecting about 365 employees across Europe, the United States and China. The Leiden site, together with Basel, Princeton, Pittsburgh and Shanghai, was closed; the company’s CAR-T trials, ATALANTA-1 and PAPILIO-1, were terminated early, with patients moved to a long-term follow-up study. On 14 October 2026 Lakefront sold its remaining preclinical CAR-T programmes, derived from the AboundBio acquisition, to Armed Cell Therapeutics, a Belgian company formed by Paul Stoffels, John Mellors and Peter Verhaeghe, for €8 million upfront, up to US$230 million in milestones and a low-single-digit royalty, declaring the wind-down “substantially complete”.
The finances reflect the strategy. In 2025 Galapagos recognised €1,069 million of previously deferred Gilead collaboration income as revenue, because the wind-down meant the deferred balance could no longer be justified, which produced a reported net profit of €320.9 million on total revenues of €1,112.2 million. Operational cash burn was €189.1 million. At the end of 2025 the company held €2,998 million of cash and financial investments, about €46 per share; by 30 June 2026, after a share buyback launched on 9 June 2026, the figure was €2,240 million, with first-half net profit of €16.6 million and cash burn of €63.6 million.
The pipeline is being rebuilt from outside. In March 2026 Lakefront and Gilead signed a binding agreement to collaborate on T-cell-engager therapies as part of Gilead’s acquisition of Ouro Medicines, and in June 2026 Lakefront completed its part of the Ouro transaction, adding gamgertamig, a clinical-stage BCMAxCD3 T-cell engager for autoimmune diseases, as its lead asset. The company also retains GLPG3667, a TYK2 inhibitor whose Phase 2 dermatomyositis study met its primary endpoint in December 2025 while its lupus study did not. The Gilead collaboration agreement remains in force, with Gilead still holding more than 25% of the shares, though both sides have said several of the original terms no longer fit.
How did Genmab’s acquisition of Merus reshape the corridor?
Genmab’s purchase of Merus, announced in September 2025, was the largest acquisition of a Dutch biotech company on record and the clearest example of how the corridor’s assets are harvested. Genmab, the Danish antibody company behind Darzalex, agreed to pay about US$8 billion in cash, reported at US$97 per share, for the Utrecht company and its lead product, petosemtamab, a bispecific antibody targeting EGFR and LGR5 in head-and-neck cancer.
Merus was founded in 2003 on the Biclonics platform, which produces bispecific antibodies from a single cell line, and listed on Nasdaq in 2016. Its first approved product, Bizengri (zenocutuzumab), received FDA approval in December 2024 for NRG1-fusion cancers in partnership with Partner Therapeutics, but petosemtamab, with Phase 3 trials under way in first- and second-line head-and-neck cancer, was the asset Genmab wanted. The deal closed in late 2025 and the merus.nl website now redirects to Genmab’s.
The transaction illustrates a pattern. Crucell went to Johnson & Johnson, Prosensa to BioMarin, Acerta Pharma (Oss) to AstraZeneca, uniQure sold its hemophilia gene therapy to CSL, and Kiadis to Sanofi; Merus is simply the largest. The corridor is good at producing clinical-stage assets and listed companies, but with the exception of argenx it has not produced an independent, commercial-stage pharmaceutical group. Part of the reason is scale: a Phase 3 oncology programme costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and a global launch needs a sales force that few European biotechs can afford to build.
For the Netherlands the sale raised familiar questions about retaining value. Merus’s research operations remain in Utrecht under Genmab ownership, but the intellectual property, the future profits and the strategic decisions now sit in Copenhagen. The parallel with Dutch headquarters leaving in other sectors, examined in the headquarters-exodus article, is hard to miss.
Where does Pharming fit, and why did it cut guidance?
Pharming is the corridor’s oldest independent commercial biotech and in 2026 it is a company caught between a mature product and a growing one. Founded in Leiden in 1988 and listed on Euronext Amsterdam and Nasdaq, it earned its living for two decades from Ruconest, a recombinant C1-esterase inhibitor for hereditary angioedema produced in the milk of transgenic rabbits. Its second product, Joenja (leniolisib), approved by the FDA in March 2023 for a rare immunodeficiency called APDS, is now the growth engine.
The first half of 2026 showed the transition. Total revenues were US$162.7 million, down 6%, because Ruconest fell 12% to US$130.7 million as oral on-demand competitors took share, while Joenja rose 37% to US$32.0 million. The company reported an operating loss of US$3.6 million for the half-year and held US$159.5 million of cash and marketable securities at 30 June, down from US$181.1 million at the end of 2025. Management cut 2026 revenue guidance by US$30 million to US$375–395 million while trimming its operating-expense guidance to US$315–320 million.
Regulatory progress has been strong. The European Commission approved Joenja in May 2026 as the first APDS treatment in the EU, Japan launched in August 2026, and the FDA approved a paediatric indication in September 2026 with a priority review of lower doses under way. Pharming also acquired Sweden’s Abliva in 2025 to add napazimone (KL1333) for mitochondrial disease, with a pivotal study due to complete enrolment in 2026. But on 29 September 2026 CEO Fabrice Chouraqui stepped down with immediate effect after the board said their views on strategy were “not sufficiently aligned”; chief commercial officer Leverne Marsh and CFO Kenneth Lynard became interim co-CEOs while a search proceeds.
| Company (base) | Lead product | Latest revenue | Status, October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| argenx (Ghent / Breda) | Vyvgart, Vyvgart Hytrulo (gMG, CIDP, ITP Japan) | US$4.2bn product sales FY2025, +90% | Operating income US$1.1bn; CEO Karen Massey; Euro Stoxx 50 member |
| Lakefront Biotherapeutics, ex-Galapagos (Mechelen) | gamgertamig (BCMAxCD3, autoimmune); GLPG3667 (TYK2) | €1,112m FY2025 (mostly deferred-income release); €18.6m H1 2026 | Cell therapy wound down; €2.24bn cash; share buyback |
| Merus (Utrecht) | petosemtamab (EGFRxLGR5, head and neck); Bizengri | n/a (acquired) | Bought by Genmab for about US$8bn, 2025 |
| Pharming (Leiden) | Ruconest (HAE); Joenja (APDS) | US$162.7m H1 2026, −6% | 2026 guidance cut to US$375–395m; interim co-CEOs |
What role do Gilead and other American partners play?
American capital is the corridor’s oxygen, and the Gilead-Galapagos relationship shows both its generosity and its limits. Gilead’s 2019 payment of more than US$5 billion in cash and equity funded Galapagos for years and gave the Belgian company a cash pile it still lives on, but the option-based structure meant Gilead could walk away from any programme it did not like, which it did with filgotinib.
argenx took a different route, keeping worldwide rights to efgartigimod and building its own commercial organisation in the United States, Japan, Europe and China. That cost more and took longer, but it means argenx captures the full margin on a US$4 billion drug rather than a royalty. It has also allowed argenx to become an acquirer itself: in August 2026 it bought Forte Biosciences, whose celiac-disease antibody FB102 reported positive Phase 2 data in October 2026 and is headed for Phase 3.
The Nasdaq listing is the other common thread. All four companies listed American depositary shares, which exposes them to US disclosure rules and litigation but gives them access to the deepest pool of biotech-specialist capital in the world. Lakefront’s transparency notifications in 2026, which showed Bank of America crossing shareholding thresholds, are a reminder that the shareholder base of a Mechelen company is now largely American.
Payers matter too. The Netherlands negotiates drug prices centrally through the Ministry of Health, and its insurer-run system, explained in the article on how Dutch healthcare works, has pushed back hard on expensive rare-disease therapies. That is one reason argenx’s growth is overwhelmingly American: the US accounts for the large majority of Vyvgart sales, and European reimbursement for new indications typically lags US approval by a year or more.
What risks hang over the corridor in 2026?
The corridor’s principal risks are concentration, clinical failure and the US policy environment. argenx carries almost all of the region’s market value and almost all of its product revenue, so a safety signal, a competitive FcRn blocker or an adverse pricing decision would ripple through every fund that invests in the region.
Clinical failure is already visible. In October 2026 argenx stopped its Phase 3 UNITY trial of efgartigimod in Sjögren’s disease after an interim analysis found it could not meet its primary endpoint, two years after inconclusive trials in ITP and pemphigus. Positive results in ocular myasthenia gravis and in autoimmune myositis, presented as a late-breaker at the ACR Convergence 2026 meeting, soften the blow, but they confirm that even a validated mechanism does not work everywhere. Galapagos’s TYK2 inhibitor split the difference, succeeding in dermatomyositis and failing in lupus.
US policy is the external risk. Most-favoured-nation drug-pricing proposals, tariffs on pharmaceutical imports and changes to FDA leadership all touch companies that earn the bulk of their revenue in America. Lakefront has moved its US hubs to Chicago and San Francisco and its strategy depends on buying assets from American biotechs at prices that a weaker funding market has made attractive, which is a bet that the US downturn in early-stage biotech persists long enough to find bargains but not so long that the assets it buys cannot be financed to approval.
What can founders and investors learn from the Dutch-Belgian biotech corridor?
Four lessons stand out from the corridor’s divergent stories.
First, own your lead asset if you can. argenx’s refusal to out-license efgartigimod in its most valuable markets is the difference between a US$4 billion revenue line and a royalty stream. Galapagos’s option deal with Gilead delivered cash but ceded control, and when the lead programme failed the structure left it with money and no product. The trade-off is real, since keeping rights means raising more equity earlier, but the companies that become durable commercial groups are the ones that kept the upside.
Second, pivots are expensive and must be reversible. Galapagos’s 2022 move into cell therapy committed capital, facilities in Leiden and the Netherlands and a specialised workforce to a modality that proved hard to finance three years later; unwinding it cost about 365 jobs and five site closures. Diversifying modalities is sensible; betting the company on one is not.
Third, exits by acquisition are the corridor’s default outcome, and founders should plan for it. Merus’s sale to Genmab at about US$8 billion was an outstanding result for shareholders, and most Dutch and Belgian biotechs will follow the same path. The practical implication is to build the data package and the manufacturing story that a large acquirer wants, rather than the commercial infrastructure a standalone company needs, unless the market opportunity justifies the far larger raise that independence requires.
Fourth, governance has to keep pace with growth. argenx’s orderly handover from founder to COO-turned-CEO, Galapagos’s rapid replacement of its CEO, CFO and board chair during its strategic reset, and Pharming’s abrupt CEO exit over strategy disagreements all show that boards in the corridor are willing to act. Investors looking for comparable ecosystems can read the UK Company Stories hub on the Cambridge-Oxford cluster, or the dsm-firmenich article for how a Dutch life-sciences company handled a cross-border merger.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is argenx a Dutch or a Belgian company?
Both. argenx SE is a European company with its legal seat in the Netherlands and offices in Breda, but it was founded in Ghent in 2008, its research is centred in Belgium, and its shares trade on Euronext Brussels and Nasdaq. It is usually described as Belgian-Dutch and is a member of the BEL 20 and the Euro Stoxx 50.
What happened to Galapagos?
After its Gilead-partnered drug filgotinib failed in the US and its 2022 cell-therapy pivot could not be financed or sold, Galapagos wound down cell therapy from January 2026, closed sites including Leiden, cut headcount toward 35 to 40 people and renamed itself Lakefront Biotherapeutics in April 2026. It holds about €2.2 billion in cash, is buying back shares and is acquiring clinical-stage assets, led by the T-cell engager gamgertamig.
How much did Genmab pay for Merus?
Genmab announced in September 2025 that it would acquire Merus for about US$8 billion in cash, reported at US$97 per share, to obtain petosemtamab, a bispecific antibody in Phase 3 trials for head-and-neck cancer. The deal closed in late 2025 and Merus is now a Genmab subsidiary.
Why did Pharming lower its 2026 guidance?
Ruconest, Pharming’s hereditary-angioedema product, lost share to new oral on-demand treatments, with revenue down 12% in the first half of 2026. Although Joenja grew 37%, the company cut full-year revenue guidance by US$30 million to US$375–395 million in July 2026. CEO Fabrice Chouraqui left in September 2026 and two executives are serving as interim co-CEOs.
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