UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

 

 

FORM 6-K

 

 

REPORT OF FOREIGN ISSUER

PURSUANT TO RULE 13a-16 OR 15d-16

OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the month of April 2020

(Commission File No. 001-38215)

 

 

NUCANA PLC

(Translation of registrant’s name into English)

 

 

3 Lochside Way

Edinburgh EH12 9DT

United Kingdom

(Address of registrant’s principal executive office)

 

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant files or will file annual reports under cover Form 20-F or Form 40-F.

Form 20-F  ☒             Form 40-F  ☐

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is submitting the Form 6-K in paper as permitted by Regulation S-T Rule 101 (b) (1):  ☐

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is submitting the Form 6-K in paper as permitted by Regulation S-T Rule 101 (b) (7):  ☐

 

 

 


Other Events.

On April 2, 2020, NuCana plc (the “Company”) issued a press release providing the following update on the status of the Company’s ongoing clinical studies in light of recent developments relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to ease the burden on clinical study sites and enable healthcare professionals to focus their efforts on caring for patients with COVID-19, the enrollment of new patients in its ongoing clinical studies has been temporarily paused. Patients who are currently enrolled in NuCana’s ongoing studies are continuing to receive treatment. While NuCana continues to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on its operations, the Company believes that this pandemic will inevitably cause some delays to the timing of initiation and completion of its clinical studies. However, the precise timing of delays and overall impact is currently unknown and NuCana is continuing to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic as it rapidly evolves.

Supplemental Risk Factor

In light of recent developments relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company is supplementing the risk factors previously disclosed under the “Risk Factors” section of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on March 10, 2020, to include the following risk factor under the heading “Risks Related to Our Business and Industry”:

The outbreak of the novel strain of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, could adversely impact our business, including our non-clinical studies and clinical trials.

Public health crises such as pandemics or similar outbreaks could adversely impact our business. In December 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), surfaced in Wuhan, China. Since then, COVID-19 has spread to multiple countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States. In response to the spread of COVID-19, we have closed our offices with our employees continuing their work outside of our offices and restricted on-site staff to only those required to execute their job responsibilities.

As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, or similar pandemics, we have and may in the future experience disruptions that could severely impact our business, preclinical studies and clinical trials, including:

 

   

delays or difficulties in enrolling patients in our clinical trials;

 

   

delays or difficulties in clinical site initiation, including difficulties in recruiting clinical site investigators and clinical site staff;

 

   

delays or disruptions in non-clinical experiments and investigational new drug application-enabling good laboratory practice standard toxicology studies due to unforeseen circumstances at contract research organizations and vendors along their supply chain;

 

   

increased rates of patients withdrawing from our clinical trials following enrollment as a result of contracting COVID-19, being forced to quarantine, or not wanting to attend hospital visits;

 

   

diversion of healthcare resources away from the conduct of clinical trials, including the diversion of hospitals serving as our clinical trial sites and hospital staff supporting the conduct of our clinical trials;


   

interruption of key clinical trial activities, such as clinical trial site data monitoring, due to limitations on travel imposed or recommended by national, state or local governments, employers and others or interruption of clinical trial subject visits and study procedures (particularly any procedures that may be deemed non-essential), which may impact the integrity of subject data and clinical study endpoints;

 

   

interruption or delays in the operations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency or other foreign regulatory agencies, which may impact approval timelines;

 

   

interruption of, or delays in receiving, supplies of our product candidates from our contract manufacturing organizations due to staffing shortages, production slowdowns or stoppages and disruptions in our supply chain or distribution vendors’ ability to ship product candidates; and

 

   

limitations on employee resources that would otherwise be focused on the conduct of our non-clinical studies and clinical trials, including because of sickness of employees or their families, the desire of employees to avoid contact with large groups of people, an increased reliance on working from home or mass transit disruptions.

These and other factors arising from the COVID-19 pandemic could worsen in countries that are already afflicted with COVID-19, could continue to spread to additional countries, or could return to countries where the pandemic has been partially contained, each of which could further adversely impact our ability to conduct clinical trials and our business generally, and could have a material adverse impact on our operations and financial condition and results.

In addition, the trading prices for our American Depositary Shares, or ADSs, and for the securities of other biopharmaceutical companies have been highly volatile as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, we may face difficulties raising capital through sales of our ADSs or such sales may be on unfavorable terms. The COVID-19 outbreak continues to rapidly evolve. The extent to which the outbreak may impact our business, preclinical studies and clinical trials will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, such as the ultimate geographic spread of the disease, the duration of the outbreak, travel restrictions and actions to contain the outbreak or treat its impact, such as social distancing and quarantines or lock-downs in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries, business closures or business disruptions and the effectiveness of actions taken in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries to contain and treat the disease.

Please also refer to “Risk Factors” section of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 10, 2020, for additional risks and uncertainties facing the Company that may have a material adverse effect on the Company’s business prospects, financial condition and results of operations.

Forward Looking Statements

This Report on Form 6-K may contain “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on the beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management of the Company. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this Report on Form 6-K are forward-looking statements, including statements concerning the Company’s planned and ongoing clinical studies for the Company’s product candidates and the potential advantages of those product candidates, including Acelarin, NUC-3373 and NUC-7738; the initiation, enrollment, timing, progress, release of data from and results of those planned and ongoing


clinical studies; the impact of COVID-19 on its preclinical studies, clinical studies, business, financial condition and results of operations; and the utility of prior non-clinical and clinical data in determining future clinical results. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risks and uncertainties set forth in the “Risk Factors” section of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019 filed with the SEC on March 10, 2020, and subsequent reports that the Company files with the SEC. Forward-looking statements represent the Company’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this Report on Form 6-K. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this press release to conform any of the forward-looking statements to actual results or to changes in its expectations.

The press release attached hereto as Exhibit 99.1 is being furnished and shall not be deemed “filed” for the purposes of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), or otherwise subject to the liabilities of that Section, nor shall it be deemed incorporated by reference in any filing made by the Company under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Exchange Act, except as shall be expressly set forth by specific reference in such a filing.

The information contained in this Report on Form 6-K shall be deemed to be incorporated by reference into the registration statements on Form F-3 (File Number 333-227624) and Form S-8 (File Number 333-223476), and related prospectuses, as such registration statements and prospectuses may be amended from time to time, and to be a part thereof from the date on which this report is filed, to the extent not superseded by documents or reports subsequently filed or furnished.

Exhibits

 

Exhibit    Description
99.1   

Press Release dated April 2, 2020


SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereunto duly authorized.

 

NuCana plc
By:   /s/ Donald Munoz
Name:   Donald Munoz
Title:   Chief Financial Officer

Date: April 2, 2020

EX-99.1

Exhibit 99.1

NuCana Provides Update on Impact of COVID-19 on Clinical Studies

Edinburgh, United Kingdom, April 2, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – NuCana plc (NASDAQ: NCNA) has been closely monitoring the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its operations and announced today an update on the status of its ongoing clinical studies. In order to help to protect the health of patients and investigators at its clinical study sites, the enrollment of new patients in its ongoing clinical studies has been temporarily paused. Patients who are currently enrolled in NuCana’s ongoing studies are continuing to receive treatment.

“This pandemic has dramatically impacted the global healthcare delivery system and altered the landscape not only for NuCana, but also for the wider biotech industry and society as a whole,” said Hugh S. Griffith, NuCana’s CEO. “This temporary pause in enrollment of new patients will help to ease the burden on our study sites and enable healthcare professionals to focus their efforts on caring for patients with COVID-19. We have also adapted ongoing studies to reduce the risk of exposure to the coronavirus by minimizing the time patients need to be in the hospital for study visits.”

While NuCana continues to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on its operations, the company believes that this pandemic will inevitably cause some delays to the timing of initiation and completion of its clinical studies. However, the precise timing of delays and overall impact is currently unknown and NuCana is continuing to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic as it rapidly evolves.

Mr. Griffith concluded: “We remain committed to resuming the enrollment of new patients as quickly as possible. I am confident that NuCana has the resources and resolve to navigate this pandemic.”

About NuCana plc

NuCana is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on significantly improving treatment outcomes for cancer patients by applying our ProTide technology to transform some of the most widely prescribed chemotherapy agents, nucleoside analogs, into more effective and safer medicines. While these conventional agents remain part of the standard of care for the treatment of many solid and hematological tumors, their efficacy is limited by cancer cell resistance mechanisms and they are often poorly tolerated. Utilizing our proprietary technology, we are developing new medicines, ProTides, designed to overcome key cancer resistance mechanisms and generate much higher concentrations of anti-cancer metabolites in cancer cells. Our most advanced ProTide candidates, Acelarin and NUC-3373, are new chemical entities derived from the nucleoside analogs gemcitabine and 5-fluorouracil, respectively, two widely used chemotherapy agents. Acelarin is currently being evaluated in four clinical studies, including a Phase III study for patients with biliary tract cancer, a Phase Ib study for patients with biliary tract cancer, a Phase II study for patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer and a Phase III study for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer for which enrollment has been suspended. NUC-3373 is currently in a Phase I study for the potential treatment of a wide range of advanced solid tumors and a Phase Ib study for patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer. Our third ProTide, NUC-7738, is a transformation of a novel nucleoside analog (3’-deoxyadenosine) and is in a Phase I study for patients with advanced solid tumors.


Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on the beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management of NuCana plc (the “Company”). All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release are forward-looking statements, including statements concerning the Company’s planned and ongoing clinical studies for the Company’s product candidates and the potential advantages of those product candidates, including Acelarin, NUC-3373 and NUC-7738; the initiation, enrollment, timing, progress, release of data from and results of those planned and ongoing clinical studies; the impact of COVID-19 on its preclinical studies, clinical studies, business, financial condition and results of operations; and the utility of prior non-clinical and clinical data in determining future clinical results. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risks and uncertainties set forth in the “Risk Factors” section of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on March 10, 2020, and subsequent reports that the Company files with the SEC. Forward-looking statements represent the Company’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this press release. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this press release to conform any of the forward-looking statements to actual results or to changes in its expectations.

For more information, please contact:

NuCana plc

Hugh S. Griffith

Chief Executive Officer

+44 131 357 1111

info@nucana.com

Westwicke, an ICR Company

Chris Brinzey

+1 339-970-2843

chris.brinzey@westwicke.com

RooneyPartners

Marion Janic

+1 212-223-4017

mjanic@rooneyco.com