New Delhi: Exam stress, workplace pressure, anxiety, sleep problems and relationship difficulties are among the concerns for which people are turning to India’s national mental health helpline, Tele-MANAS, which has received nearly 48 lakh calls in four years.
The figures offer a glimpse of the need for accessible mental health support, even as a new World Health Organization (WHO) guide warns that the global shift from hospital-centred care to community-based services remains far from complete.
Released ahead of World Mental Health Day, the WHO guide found that 81% of countries continue to provide mental health services in psychiatric hospitals, while only 9% have completed the transition to community-based care. Another 53% remain at an early stage of the shift.
The gap is particularly striking in the WHO South-East Asia region, where 63% of countries are still at an early stage of transition and none has completed it, according to the report’s regional assessment. The figures are regional and do not represent India’s individual status.
The consequences of hospital-centred care are reflected in the duration of admissions. The report found that 28% of people admitted to psychiatric hospitals stay for more than six months, while 16% remain for over a year. It also estimates that 47% of mental health expenditure goes to psychiatric hospitals, although this figure is based on data from only 49 countries.
The WHO calls for mental healthcare to be delivered closer to people’s homes, supported by community services, rehabilitation, housing and continued clinical care. It cautions that deinstitutionalisation cannot mean simply closing hospitals or discharging patients without follow-up. Without adequate planning and support, people risk being neglected or losing access to care.
In India, Tele-MANAS has received 47,75,644 calls since its launch on October 10, 2022. Of the 13.35 lakh caller profiles analysed by the Union Health Ministry, 73.2% belonged to people aged 18-45. Men accounted for 54.18% of the profiles and women 43.78%.
The free, confidential service is available round the clock on 14416, through 53 operational cells covering all 36 States and Union Territories. The government has also sanctioned the District Mental Health Programme in 767 districts and integrated mental health services into more than 1.83 lakh Ayushman Arogya Mandirs.
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Bengaluru: The World Health Organization said on Saturday that it still does not know what caused the pneumonia that killed a Russian lab worker at an anti-plague research center in Siberia this month, and that no case of plague had been registered.
The WHO said the Russian state regulator reported that tests of the lab worker and those who came in contact with her were negative for the high-threat pathogens tested, that her contacts still showed no symptoms, and that no further linked cases of severe pneumonia had been identified.
“Based on the information provided … (the) WHO has not identified evidence of ongoing transmission associated with this event. A key uncertainty remains the absence of a confirmed diagnosis in the deceased laboratory worker,” it said in a statement.
The lab worker fell ill and died in undisclosed circumstances on October 2, prompting authorities to quarantine about 200 people and causing public health fears on social media.
Global health officials have been extra alert to fatal pneumonia cases of undetermined cause since the COVID-19 pandemic, which began with a cluster of fast-spreading fatal respiratory illness in China. The cause of individual pneumonia cases can often not be determined.
Russian authorities have said the lab worker was appropriately vaccinated and that they found no microorganisms linked to her work in her body.
On Thursday, Russia said it had completed health checks on all the worker’s contacts. It says it had provided full information to the WHO according to established procedures.
Bengaluru: A group of Bengaluru doctors has found that a newer PET scan using a tracer called Fibroblast Activation Protein Inhibitor (FAPI) can detect the spread of ovarian cancer inside the abdomen more accurately than conventional contrast-enhanced CT scans. The prospective study involving 200 women with ovarian cancer has been published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Peritoneal spread, in which cancer cells spread over the lining of the abdomen, is common in advanced ovarian cancer and can significantly influence whether a patient is considered suitable for surgery. However, small or flat deposits, particularly around the bowel and upper abdomen, can be difficult to detect on conventional imaging. Accurate assessment of the extent of disease is, therefore, important in deciding whether a patient should undergo surgery or receive chemotherapy before surgery.
The study, conducted at Aster International Institute of Oncology, Bengaluru, from May 2024 to April 2025, compared 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET/CT with contrast-enhanced CT in 200 patients before cytoreductive surgery. The researchers compared the scans with what surgeons actually found during surgery, which was taken as the reference standard.
FAPI PET detected peritoneal disease with a sensitivity of 81.8%, compared with 54.6% for CT, while its overall accuracy was 86%, against 78% for CT. CT also tended to underestimate the amount of disease. The average Peritoneal Cancer Index (PCI), a score used to measure the extent of cancer spread inside the abdomen, was 15.7 during surgery, compared with 14.1 on FAPI PET and 10.8 on CT.
Dr Somashekhar SP, one of the doctors involved in the study and group medical director, Aster DM Quality Care, lead consultant in surgical, gynaecological oncology and robotic surgery, Aster Hospitals, Whitefield, said accurately determining the extent of peritoneal disease before surgery can help doctors choose the appropriate treatment strategy.
He said FAPI PET is a relatively new technology in India and is currently available only at a limited number of cancer centres. According to Somashekhar, FAPI PET findings led to a change in treatment decisions in around 18-21% of patients in the study.
Unlike FDG PET, which relies on glucose metabolism and can be affected by normal bowel activity and inflammation, FAPI targets fibroblast activation protein (FAP) found in cancer-associated fibroblasts surrounding tumours. The tracer has low background uptake, making tumour deposits more conspicuous on imaging.
Doctors said the technology could potentially reduce the need for invasive procedures such as diagnostic laparoscopy in some patients by providing a better picture of disease spread before surgery. However, the researchers acknowledged that the study was conducted at a single centre and that further prospective studies are needed.
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Mumbai: For most, the day begins with checking the phone. The scrolling carries on through the commute, over meals, during conversations, in front of the television and ends only before bed.
While adults may be better equipped to detach themselves from the internet, screen addiction and social media often ends up having a much bigger impact on children, and teens in particular.
As the lines between the online and offline worlds blur, doctors say they are seeing an increasing effect of screen addiction on younger patients. On World Mental Health Day, ETHealthworld explores the toll of doomscrolling on young minds, the warning signs to watch for and the small changes that can help.
The pressure of being online
The biggest concern is not social media itself, but how it is designed and how it is used, says Dr. Sameer Malhotra, Principal Director – Department of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket.
He says social media harm can take several forms, starting with constant social comparison, exposure to emotionally distressing material and cyberbullying.
“Constant exposure to curated images of other people’s lives can create feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem and FOMO, or fear of missing out. Algorithms tend to make things worse by repeatedly exposing a person to emotionally intense or distressing material, reinforcing anxiety, anger, body-image concerns or negative thinking,” he adds
Late-night scrolling takes a further toll by disrupting sleep, which in turn affects mood, attention and emotional regulation, Dr Malhotra adds.
Impact of addiction
Excessive screen use is increasingly linked to behavioural problems among teenagers and children, and the numbers are rising.
Data from WHO’s Regional Office for Europe revealed a sharp rise in problematic social media use among adolescents, with rates increasing from 7 per cent in 2018 to 11 per cent in 2022.
The study titled “Health Behaviour in School-aged Children”, surveyed 2,80,000 young people aged 11, 13 and 15 across 44 countries and regions in Europe, central Asia and Canada in 2022.
Girls reported higher levels of problematic social media use than boys (13 per cent vs 9 per cent).
The report defined problematic social media use as a pattern of behaviour characterized by addiction-like symptoms. These include an inability to control social media usage, experiencing withdrawal when not using it, neglecting other activities in favour of social media, and facing negative consequences in daily life due to excessive use.
Doctors in India say they are seeing the same pattern play out.
Dr. Pretty Duggar Gupta, Consultant, Psychiatrist, Aster Whitefield Hospital says “A clear change is the presence of patients in their teenage years and twenties coming with symptoms of anxiety, sadness, insomnia, concentration problems, and difficulty turning their minds off. It does not always need to be the primary reason, but very often it becomes a significant factor, especially when patients use computers past midnight or their usage is problematic.”
The problem is also evident in pre-teens and younger children, says Dr Nitin M, Consultant Pediatrician & Neonatologist, Motherhood Hospitals, Electronic City, Bangalore.
“In recent times, we are increasingly getting younger patients, especially kids, who experience anxiety, sleep issues, inability to concentrate and emotional fatigue.The screen time is usually a contributing factor in such cases, especially in terms of the impact on sleep, physical exercise and interaction with people.”
However, Dr Nitin notes that it is almost never appropriate to blame these complaints only on social media, as sometimes it is just a contributor to pre-existing conditions.
Warning Signs
Doctors believe that the red flag has nothing to do with the amount of time that you spend online, but whether you are unable to control and regulate it.
Dr Trideep Choudhury, Consultant Psychiatrist, ADAYU Fortis, says social media use becomes problematic when it begins having a negative impact on other aspects of a person’s life
“Early warning signs that social media use has become a problematic behaviour are if the person starts avoiding other necessary tasks just to remain online or feel low when they cannot be online. Sometimes they may be easily irritated, having erratic sleep schedules as they tend to sleep late, and miss their daily routine as they wake up late.
“Such people also lose track of time as they are scrolling, giving rise to a lot of physical signs due to too much scrolling like headaches , watery eyes , blurry vision. They may complain of lack of focus in their work. As this usage goes uncontrolled, there may be a lot of abstaining from school, work and even other activities like physical play which the person liked earlier are neglected.”
Corrective Steps
Doctors say the simplest fix is to change the environment rather than lean on willpower.
Dr Malhotra suggests creating a “friction point” to make it harder to reach for the phone.
“The one practical step I would recommend is to create a “friction point”: choose one high-risk period, particularly the hour before sleep, and keep the phone physically outside the bedroom or out of immediate reach. It is much easier to change behaviour when we change the environment rather than relying entirely on willpower.”
However he adds that, “If someone is experiencing significant distress, functional impairment, self-harm thoughts, or an inability to control the behaviour despite repeated attempts, that is a point to seek professional help, assessment and timely treatment.”
For families, Dr Nitin recommends a consistent screen-free routine for both adults and kids, particularly during meals and before bedtime.
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Mumbai: A day after the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) approved a cap on the markup of anti-cancer drugs at 30 per cent of their MRP, the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD) has pushed for a similar measure to rationalise markup on medical devices.
AiMeD said that while it has always backed trade margin rationalisation for medical devices, the design of any such cap will decide whether it works.
It cautioned that earlier price interventions, including the 2019 cap on cancer drugs and the caps on a few COVID-critical devices were applied from the price at which products were sold to distributors.
According to AiMeD, “The importer’s sale to its distributors became a second point of sale, while the domestic manufacturer’s sale to its distributors is the first point of sale.”
As a result, the importer’s margin stays outside the capped chain, and the same product ends up with a maximum retail price (MRP) that is about 43 per cent higher than its domestic equivalent.
The medical devices body put forward four suggestions for any rationalisation starting with treating the importer as the first point of sale, with importer margins inside the capped chain as importer is distributor of overseas manufacturer.
It also suggested applying the same margin discipline to domestic and imported products giving parity of Indian manufacturers with overseas manufacturers.
AiMeD added that any rationalisation attempt must be piloted first on selected high-volume consumables, using a rationalised band that avoids shortages and introducing one uniform national framework, designed in consultation with manufacturers.
The association said it is ready to work with the Department of Pharmaceuticals and NPPA on this.
Rajiv Nath, Forum Coordinator, AiMeD said, “AiMeD has been requesting the Department of Pharmaceuticals and the media to bring all stakeholders to the table, so that we reach a consensus that lets every participant in the supply chain earn a fair return, while ensuring no one profits from patients’ distress.”
New Delhi: Prolonged sitting while gaming, binge-watching OTT content or attending online classes may increase the risk of blood clots in the legs among young people, vascular specialists have warned, citing evidence linking sedentary behaviour to a higher risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE).
The experts said extended periods of uninterrupted sitting can slow blood flow from the legs and contribute to deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a condition in which a clot forms in the deep veins and can become life-threatening if it travels to the lungs.
The warning was issued at the VSI-ASVS 2026 conference, being held at Pullman and Novotel, Aerocity, here from October 8 to 10.
The conference has brought together more than 400 faculty members and over 1,000 delegates from India and abroad to discuss advances and emerging challenges in vascular and endovascular surgery.
A 2024 systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis published in Scientific Reports, which included 25 articles and 31 studies, found that people with the highest levels of sedentary behaviour had approximately 24 per cent higher risk of VTE than those with the lowest exposure.
The analysis also reported a 2 per cent increase in risk for every additional hour of sedentary behaviour per day.
Dr Tapish Sahu, Organising Secretary of VSI-ASVS 2026 and Director and Head of the Department of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at Max Hospital Delhi, said doctors were increasingly seeing young patients whose lifestyle habits, including prolonged sitting and excessive screen exposure, warranted closer attention.
“We are increasingly seeing young patients in our OPD with symptoms that make us look closely at their lifestyle, including prolonged sitting, excessive screen exposure and long gaming sessions. The latest evidence is concerning because the risk is not restricted to people who are completely inactive,” Dr Sahu said.
The 2024 meta-analysis found about a 24 per cent higher risk of VTE among those with the highest sedentary exposure, while every additional hour of sedentary behaviour was associated with approximately a 2 per cent increase in VTE risk, Dr Sahu said.
When a young person sits continuously for four, five or six hours playing games or binge-watching OTT content, the calf muscles are barely working as a pump for venous blood, he explained.
“We need to make movement breaks a part of digital life,” he said.
DVT, which was traditionally associated with older age, hospitalisation or prolonged bed rest, can also affect younger people.
Experts, however, cautioned that screen use does not automatically cause blood clots and prolonged sitting is generally an additional risk factor, particularly when combined with obesity, dehydration, smoking, hormonal factors, inherited clotting disorders or a previous history of thrombosis.
A study examining adolescents with thrombosis identified 11 patients who reported at least four hours of daily screen exposure. Their average digital-device use was around six hours a day, while uninterrupted immobility averaged 2.7 hours. Eight had DVT in the lower limbs, two had pulmonary embolism and one had subclavian-vein thrombosis.
Researchers also identified inherited thrombophilia in many of these patients, suggesting that prolonged digital-device use and immobility may act as additional triggers rather than the sole cause of thrombosis.
Dr Tarun Grover, Organising Chairman of VSI-ASVS 2026 and Senior Director of Peripheral Vascular and Endovascular Sciences at Medanta, said doctors needed to ask young patients about their screen-time habits while assessing vascular health.
“Earlier, when we thought about prolonged immobility, we primarily discussed long-distance travel, hospitalisation or being bedridden. Today, we also need to ask young patients how many hours they spend continuously sitting in front of a gaming console, computer or OTT screen.
“The evidence showing a 24 per cent higher VTE risk with higher sedentary exposure should make us take this issue seriously. A young age should not create a false sense of security, particularly when prolonged sitting is combined with other risk factors,” he said.
Dr Bhupesh Garg, Senior Vascular and Endovascular Surgeon at the Vascular Society of India, said prolonged sitting and smoking could contribute to vascular risks through different mechanisms.
“Just as smoking increases vascular and clotting risks, prolonged sitting can also increase the risk of blood clots, although through a different mechanism. When a person remains seated for hours, the calf-muscle pump becomes inactive, venous blood flow from the legs slows down and blood can stagnate in the deep veins.
“This is particularly concerning when young people spend several uninterrupted hours gaming or binge-watching OTT content. We are seeing more young patients in clinical practice in whom prolonged sedentary behaviour is an important part of the lifestyle history. The message should be simple: if you are going to spend hours on a screen, do not spend those hours completely still,” he said.
Doctors said young people often spend several hours sitting in school or college before continuing with gaming, social media, streaming or other online activities, leaving little scope for movement throughout the day.
They advised people to break up long periods of sitting with regular movement and avoid remaining immobile for hours at a stretch. They also stressed that physical activity alone may not completely offset the risks associated with prolonged sedentary behaviour.
The experts said the comparison between sitting and smoking should be understood as a public-health warning, not a claim that the two carry equivalent risks. They urged greater awareness of sedentary behaviour as a potentially modifiable factor in vascular health.
Mission director, National Health Mission (NHM), UP, Pinky Jowel said the decision followed a successful pilot across five districts—Sitapur, Hardoi, Rae Bareli, Jalaun and Bahraich. The intervention is aimed at women who find it difficult to take iron-folic acid (IFA) tablets regularly due to side effects or adherence challenges, and those who require quicker improvement in haemoglobin levels during pregnancy.
“The one-shot injection is called Ferric Carboxymaltose (FCM) and allows greater compliance of medicine. More than 20,000 doses of the injection were administered in the pilot,” Jowel said on Friday.
Health officials said FCM can reduce repeated visits to health facilities compared with Iron Sucrose, which often requires multiple sessions to complete a dose course. By delivering treatment in a single sitting, the injection is expected to ease access for women in rural and hard-to-reach areas and improve continuity of care.
Buoyed by the response to the pilot, the department has placed the injection on the state’s essential medicines list. Officials said the step would help streamline procurement and ensure availability at public health facilities, alongside training of doctors and staff nurses and awareness-building among beneficiaries.
Anaemia is a significant factor in maternal mortality that weakens cardiac reserve and erodes immunity. This leaves little strength in women to tolerate blood loss during childbirth, suggests The Missing Evidence: anaemia, postpartum bleeding and maternal death Report brought out by Anaemia Action Alliance formed by WHO and UNICEF.
Diet and Biomarkers Survey in India (DABS-I) by ICMR–National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) estimates anaemia prevalence among adolescent girls and adult women at 39% to 42%.
As per Union health ministry’s Anaemia Mukt Bharat operational framework and findings from clinical maternal death audits, anaemia is a direct or indirect contributor to an estimated 40% to 50% of maternal deaths. In Uttar Pradesh, Maternal Death Surveillance and Response (MDSR) records classify severe anaemia as the direct cause in roughly 7% to 19% of cases.
Hospital reviews have also indicated that more than half of women who died had haemoglobin levels below seven units on admission.
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Bengaluru: The US CDC on Friday reported 4,080 confirmed measles cases in the country as of October 8, up 193 from a week earlier.
Twenty-six cases were identified among international visitors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Measles-related hospitalizations this year stand at 414, or 10% of cases, compared with 244 hospitalizations in 2025
The CDC has confirmed two measles-associated deaths in 2026, though it has not identified the states involved, compared with three deaths in 2025
Separately, Pennsylvania health officials have reported five deaths linked to the state’s measles outbreak this year
Last month, the CDC shifted to using mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics for measles-related deaths, rather than relying on state health departments, a change that has drawn scrutiny
As of October 9, the Pennsylvania health department has reported 1,136 measles cases in 2026, including 219 hospitalizations
Children and teenagers aged 5 to 19 accounted for the largest share of cases at 1,716, or 42% of infections, followed by adults aged 20 and older at 1,635 cases, or 40%
Earlier this week, New York declared a statewide disaster emergency over a measles outbreak after reporting 108 cases this year through October 3, including 92 cases since July 15
(Reporting by Siddhi Mahatole and Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)
New York: Patients with blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa who received a treatment based on research that won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine had their ability to detect objects restored in a small trial that demonstrated the potential of the novel approach.
So-called optogenetic therapy uses light to control brain cells. In the study, researchers combined gene therapy that made surviving retinal ganglion cells sensitive to light with delivery of light to stimulate these cells.
The 10 trial participants each received an injection into one eye carrying genetic instructions for ChrimsonR, a light-sensitive protein from GenSight Biologics.
Patients then wore goggles that captured visual information, converted it into patterns of light at wavelengths that activated ChrimsonR in the modified retinal cells, and sent the patterns of light back to the eye.
Seven patients became more sensitive to light, with six achieving clinically meaningful improvements, such as being able to detect when an object was present, determine where it was located and reach toward it accurately.
One severe adverse event occurred immediately after injection and resolved within minutes, researchers reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.
While larger studies are needed to definitively prove the usefulness of ChrimsonR and the goggles, the findings show that even at a very advanced stage of blindness, surviving retinal ganglion cells can be made responsive to light and transmit visual information to the brain, the researchers said.
“Even in people with profound vision loss, the visual system retains a remarkable capacity to process new information,” study leader Dr. Jose-Alain Sahel of the University of Pittsburgh said in a statement.
RADIATION EFFECTIVE AS SURGERY FOR LOCALIZED PROSTATE CANCER
Radiotherapy kept localized prostate cancer under control just as well as surgery, with fewer side effects, researchers reported at the recent American Society for Radiation Oncology, or ASTRO, meeting in Boston.
After a median of eight years of following patients, survival without recurrence was statistically similar. Of those who received five sessions of stereotactic body radiation therapy delivered over two weeks, 91% were alive without cancer recurrence versus 84% after surgery.
SBRT delivers the radiation directly to the prostate while limiting exposure to nearby healthy tissue.
The trial involved 123 patients, most with low- or intermediate-risk cancers who were monitored for reappearance of a tumor or a rise in prostate-specific antigen levels, a potential indicator of prostate cancer.
The trial’s original goal was to compare quality of life after the interventions. Efforts to enroll nearly twice as many participants were thwarted by the COVID pandemic, leaving the study with too few patients to answer that question.
Because it was not designed to establish noninferiority for cancer control, the trial cannot prove the treatments are equivalent for this outcome.
“What we can say is that… we have mature data showing excellent cancer outcomes with five-treatment radiotherapy,” study leader Dr. Nicholas van As of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in the UK said in a statement.
A separate analysis presented at ASTRO found that patient-reported sexual-function scores declined in both groups but remained significantly better after the radiation therapy. Median erectile-function scores on a 25-point scale, where higher scores indicate better function, were 19 with SBRT and 5 for prostatectomy after five years.
Also at five years, 8.3% of SBRT patients were using urinary pads for leaks, compared with 48% of surgery patients.
AVOIDING WHOLE-BRAIN RADIATION IN RARE LUNG CANCER
Patients with an uncommon, aggressive form of lung cancer who develop brain metastases can benefit from a safer radiotherapy technique that is already standard for common lung tumors, according to data from a study reported at ASTRO.
Stereotactic radiosurgery uses high-dose radiation beams to destroy brain tumors without surgical incisions and with minimal damage to nearby brain tissues.
It is already the preferred treatment for brain metastases from most other tumors. Small cell lung cancer has been an exception for fear that treating only visible tumors could leave cancer cells behind.
As a result, patients undergo whole-brain radiation, increasing their risks for memory loss and other cognitive declines.
In the trial, 151 patients received either stereotactic radiosurgery or a modern form of whole-brain radiation.
Patients lived a median of 17 months after focused stereotactic radiosurgery versus nine months following whole-brain radiotherapy.
The trial was designed to assess the length of time before patients experienced cognitive decline from each treatment method. The researchers found no significant difference, possibly because of protection afforded by the newer form of whole-brain radiation, they said.
Comparisons of cognitive outcomes may also have been complicated by fewer whole-brain radiation patients alive for later follow-up.
While prolonged survival was not the trial’s primary goal and cannot be proved by this study, the results show how far both approaches have come, principal investigator Dr. Vinai Gondi of the Northwestern Medicine West Region and Proton Center in Warrenville, Illinois, said in a statement.
“For patients with small cell lung cancer, we now have two modern radiation therapy strategies to consider and randomized evidence to help us understand how best to use them,” Gondi said.
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(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Immunology research continues to draw investment for new ways to suppress excessive immune responses. TRexBio takes a different approach, tapping into the body’s built-in way of keeping the immune system in balance. A TRex-discovered molecule is progressing in the clinic in the hands of partner Eli Lilly. Now the biotech has $116.7 million in IPO cash to support clinical development of its wholly owned assets.
Late Thursday, TRex priced 8.33 million shares at $14 each, which was the low end of the preliminary price range it had set earlier in the week. Those shares began trading on the Nasdaq Friday under the stock symbol “TRXB.”
The research of South San Francisco-based TRex focuses on regulatory T cells, or Tregs. While the activity of immune cells leads to inflammation, the body counterbalances that with Tregs, which tamp down excessive immune responses and stop the immune system from attacking healthy tissue.
There are some biotech companies developing Treg cell therapies made by harvesting and engineering a patient’s own Tregs or working with Tregs sourced from healthy donors. While there’s evidence that these approaches can work, the commercialization of T cell therapies for cancer shows the logistical hurdles of engineering cells into living medicines. There’s one FDA-approved Treg so far, a blood cancer treatment developed by Orca Bio. It’s made by shipping a sample of patient blood to an Orca facility that isolates Tregs. Those cells are then shipped back for infusion into the patient. The complexity, cost, and time for manufacturing Treg cell therapies likely limits its use in large autoimmune disease populations, TRex said in its IPO filing.
Rather than working with directly with Tregs, TRex aims to leverage Tregs already in the patient’s body. Its drugs are fusion proteins designed to activate and expand Tregs that are in inflamed tissue as a way of restoring immune balance. The company says its drugs can do so selectively, without also activating proinflammatory immune cells. These drugs come from a TRex platform technology that gleans immunology insights by analyzing a database of healthy and diseased tissue samples.
“Our approach is designed to address disease at its source — in the tissue — by developing medicines focused on tissue immune homeostasis that we believe have the potential to provide a durable clinical benefit,” TRex said in the filing.
TRex formed in 2018. In 2021, Lilly participated in the biotech’s Series A financing. Two years later, the pharma company paid $55 million up front to begin a research collaboration. The alliance produced TRB-051, which is designed to modulate immune effector cells. In June, TRex said Lilly plans to advance TRB-051 to Phase 2a testing in lupus with cutaneous involvement.
TRex’s most advanced wholly owned program is TRB-061, which is designed to activate tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 (TNFR2), expanding and activating Tregs in inflamed tissues. In August, TRex reported Phase 1a results showing activation and expansion of Tregs in the tissue of healthy volunteers. The study drug was also well tolerated and no serious adverse events were reported. The results supported dose selection for a Phase 1b test in patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis; preliminary data are expected in mid-2027. TRex also describes alopecia areata as a “priority indication,” pointing to published studies supporting the role of Tregs in mediating the hair follicle cycle and hair regrowth.
A second TRex drug candidate, TRB-071, is designed to activate the protein CD30 to augment tissue Tregs and block immune system inflammatory signaling. In the filing, TRex points to genetic studies supporting the involvement of CD30 and its ligand in inflammatory bowel disease. The company plans to start a Phase 1 test in the first half of next year.
In its history as a private company, TRex said it had raised about $220 million. Lilly paid TRex a $15 million milestone payment in 2024 and the biotech is eligible to receive up to $577.5 million more in additional milestone payments, according to the filing. TRex last raised money early this year, a $50 million financing.
A 2021 collaboration agreement with a Johnson & Johnson affiliate was terminated last year, according to the filing. But the document also shows Johnson & Johnson Innovation—JJDC owns a 4.6% post-IPO stake. Lilly is TRex’s largest shareholder with a 16.8% stake after the IPO, followed by the 14.1% owned by SV Health Investors. TRex said Lilly has expressed an interest in purchasing additional shares at the IPO price in an amount not to exceed 19.9% of the company, but there is no binding commitment for the stock purchase.
As of the end of the second quarter of this year, TRex reported its cash position was $90.9 million. Combined with the IPO proceeds, TRex plans to spend about $90 million to bring TRB-016 through the readout of topline Phase 2 data in atopic dermatitis and alopecia areata and $10 million for the start and completion of TRB-071’s Phase 1 test in healthy volunteers. The company estimates its capital will last into the second half of 2029.
Retension Pharma Reels In $45M for Next-Gen Hypertension Drug
Retension Pharmaceuticals joined the public markets with an IPO that raised $45 million for a drug in clinical development for uncontrolled hypertension.
Retension’s RTN-001 is a small molecule inhibitor of an enzyme called PDE-5. In its IPO filing, the company notes that first-generation PDE-5 inhibitors, such as the sexual dysfunction drug Viagra, were initially studied in cardiovascular indications such as hypertension and angina. Retension contends these drugs did not offer adequate bioavailability and tissue penetration to address cardiac tissue, leading to their failure as blood pressure medications.
Falls Church, Virginia-based Retension describes RTN-001 as a next-generation PDE-5 inhibitor engineered for better bioavailability and increased distribution to places such as the aorta and its branches. In two Phase 2 pilot trials, the company said the once-daily pill led to clinically meaningful placebo-adjusted reductions in blood pressure.
“We believe RTN-001 has the potential to be an effective treatment for hypertension with a favorable safety profile and thus be part of an anti-hypertensive treatment approach,” Retension said in its IPO filing.
The molecule that is now RTN-001 was originally developed by a company called Surface Logix. It has changed hands several times; in 2023, Retension licensed all rights to the molecule from Redux Therapeutics. As of the end of June, Retension reported its cash position was about $13.5 million. That capital along with the IPO proceeds will go toward clinical development of RTN-001, Retension’s only drug candidate.
The company plans to spend about $18 million to complete an ongoing Phase 2b test of RTN-001 in uncontrolled hypertension. Preliminary data are expected in the first half of 2027. Another $10 million is budgeted for preparing for a planned Phase 3 test in this indication.
Retension offered 3.75 million shares priced at $12 each, which was the midpoint of the price range the biotech set in preliminary financial terms earlier in the week. Those shares began trading on the Nasdaq Friday under the stock symbol “RTSN.”
