Edinburgh, U.K., 1st December 2014: NuCana BioMed Limited (“NuCana” or “the Company”), the clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing and commercialising a portfolio of novel anti-cancer medicines, today announced the appointment of Dr. Paolo Paoletti M.D. to its Board. Dr. Paoletti is President of Oncology at GSK and brings to NuCana significant international experience in clinical development and commercial strategy having held a number of senior roles in oncology across the global pharmaceutical sector.
Commenting on his appointment, Hugh Griffith, NuCana’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “This is an exciting time for NuCana as the Company continues to gather compelling efficacy and safety data in patients with advanced solid tumours. We are truly delighted to welcome Paolo to our Board. His extensive clinical and commercial experience in oncology will be of enormous benefit to us as we refine our regulatory strategy and expand the clinical development programmes internationally.”
Dr. Paoletti said: “I am delighted to join NuCana at this exciting time and to bring my experience to help facilitate the rapid development of ProTides. I strongly believe that NuCana’s new medicines could have a major impact on the way we treat cancer patients in the future.”
Dr. Paoletti has been President of Oncology at GSK since 2010. He started his career at GSK in 2004 as the Head of Development in Oncology. His focus was on expanding the oncology portfolio and building the clinical development and commercial organisation. Under his leadership GSK Oncology has grown significantly and brought seven new medicines to market including Arranon/Atriance; Tykerb/Tyverb; Promacta/Revolade; Arzerra; Votrient; Tafinlar and Mekinist. With these medicines, the GSK oncology portfolio covered a range of tumours such as breast cancer, renal cancer, sarcoma, melanoma and aplastic anaemia to name but a few. In the proposed 3-way transaction with Novartis announced in April, the GSK oncology portfolio including marketed assets and late stage research portfolio was valued at $16 billion.
Prior to GSK, Paolo served as the Vice President of Clinical Development for Lilly Oncology. During his tenure at Lilly the first approval for Alimta (pemetrexed) and new indications for Gemzar (gemcitabine) and Alimta were achieved.
NuCana’s first ProTide in the clinic, Acelarin® has achieved exceptional levels of disease control in a comprehensive study of patients with advanced, rapidly progressing solid tumours1. Regulatory studies for Acelarin® are scheduled to commence in 2015 for pancreas, ovarian and biliary cancers. Additional ProTides will be brought into the clinic over the next 12 months.
References:
1ASCO 2014 Annual Meeting, Abstract 2531
About NuCana
NuCana® is a rapidly growing, clinical stage biopharmaceutical company with a broad development portfolio of novel anti-cancer medicines. The Company’s proprietary ProTide technology has the potential to set new benchmarks in efficacy and safety with its treatments that are specifically designed to overcome key cancer resistance mechanisms. Acelarin® is NuCana’s lead medicine and was the first ProTide to enter the clinic in October 2010. Acelarin® achieved exceptional levels of disease control in a broad range of patients with advanced, rapidly progressing solid tumours1. Privately held, NuCana, which raised $57 million in a Series B financing in April 2014, is backed by world-leading investors including Sofinnova Partners, Sofinnova Ventures, Morningside Ventures, Alida Capital International and the Scottish Investment Bank.
For more information, please visit: www.nucana.com
About ProTides
ProTides are pre-activated agents, with a protective phosphoramidate group that allows the anti-cancer medicine to bypass the key resistance mechanisms that limit the activity of many current chemotherapy drugs. Acelarin® is the first-in-class of the ProTides in oncology, but it is a technology platform that can be applied to all nucleoside analogues. Gilead’s ProTide, Sovaldi®, has shown the potential of this new class of medicines for anti-viral therapy with sales of $8.5 billion within 9 months of approval.
For more information, please contact
For NuCana:
Hugh S. Griffith
CEO
Tel +44 (0) 131 248 3660
info@nucana.com
www.nucana.com
Consilium Strategic Communications
Mary-Jane Elliott
Matthew Neal
Ivar Milligan
Tel: +44 (0)20 3709 5700
nucana@consilium-comms.com
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