NuCana BioMed, a biopharmaceutical company specialising in developing the next generation of anti-cancer therapies, has secured £6.74 million in venture capital financing. The investment was led by Sofinnova Partners, joined by Morningside Ventures, Scottish Investment Bank’s Scottish Venture Fund and Alida Capital International.
NuCana was founded in 2008 in Edinburgh by CEO Hugh Griffith and Executive Chairman Chris Wood. Between them they have over forty years' experience developing new cancer drugs.
This experience includes founding and managing Bioenvision, where they successfully developed and commercialised a new medicine to treat childhood leukaemia, and which, after listing the company on Nasdaq, they sold to Genzyme Corporation in 2007 for $345 million.
NuCana has exclusive worldwide rights to the revolutionary ProTide technology in cancer. Its approach is to target specific patients whose cancers are resistant to some of the anti-cancer drugs in common use today.
Adding the ProTide allows the cancer drugs to bypass the key pathways that make cancer cells resistant and as such greatly extends their utility. NuCana’s first compound, a gemcitabine ProTide, will enter clinical studies in early 2012, rapidly followed by two other ProTides.
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