Exhibit 99.3
NuCana Reports First Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Provides Business Update
Clinical StudiesRe-Opened to New Patient Enrollment Following Temporary Pause Due toCOVID-19 Pandemic
Numerous Clinical Data Announcements Expected in 2020
Cash and Cash Equivalents Expected to Fund Operations At Least into the Fourth Quarter of 2021
Edinburgh, United Kingdom, May 19, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – NuCana plc (NASDAQ: NCNA) announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020 and provided an update on its broad clinical program with its transformative ProTide therapeutics.
As of March 31, 2020, NuCana had cash and cash equivalents of £47.6 million compared to £52.0 million as of December 31, 2019. NuCana continues to advance its various clinical programs and reported a net loss of £4.0 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2020, as compared to £5.4 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2019. Basic and diluted loss per share was £0.12 for the quarter as compared to £0.17 per share for quarter ended March 31, 2019.
“At NuCana, we remain focused on advancing our novel ProTide pipeline to develop more effective and safer medicines for patients with cancer” said Hugh S. Griffith, NuCana’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “TheCOVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the global healthcare delivery system and caused us to pause enrollment of new patients in our ongoing clinical studies in early April. However, we are pleased to have nowre-started new patient enrollment in our clinical studies, including NuTide:121, our Phase III study of Acelarin plus cisplatin in patients with biliary tract cancer, and NuTide:302, our Phase Ib study ofNUC-3373 in patients with colorectal cancer. We will resume enrollment of new patients at all of our clinical sites as quickly as possible. We are also fortunate to be in a strong financial position during this unprecedented time. As a result of having undertaken several cost-saving and cost-deferral initiatives, we believe our cash runway now extends at least into the fourth quarter of 2021, as compared to our previous guidance of into the second half of 2021.”
Mr. Griffith continued: “Looking at progress in the quarter, we announced preliminary data from the Phase II study of single-agent Acelarin(NUC-1031) in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer that demonstrated a favorable disease control rate and Acelarin’s ability to achieve confirmed complete and partial responses in a very heavilypre-treated patient population. While we had previously announced that we are not advancing Acelarin as a single agent in this setting due to changes in the treatment and regulatory landscapes, we were pleased with the preliminary results of this study and believe that the data highlights the potential of our ProTide platform. We are also rapidly advancing our two other ProTides in the clinic. ForNUC-3373, our ProTide transformation of5-FU, we look forward to reporting additional data from the ongoing Phase Ib study in patients with advanced colorectal cancer and the Phase I dose-escalation study in patients with advanced solid tumors. For our third ProTide,NUC-7738, a transformation of a novel nucleoside analog, 3’-deoxyadenosine, we expect to announce the first clinical data from the ongoing Phase I study in patients with advanced solid tumors later this year.”