NIH Grant Awarded to Study Treatment for Crohn’s Disease

Trethera Corp., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing first-in-class therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases, has been awarded a $1.8 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for preclinical studies of TRE515 as a Crohn’s disease treatment. TRE515 is a once-daily oral therapy that inhibits deoxycytidine kinase (dCK), an enzyme critical to the deoxyribonucleoside salvage pathway driving abnormal cell proliferation in autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s.

The award follows Trethera’s prior $400,000 NIH Crohn’s research grant and builds on the encouraging findings presented at the 2025 Crohn’s & Colitis Congress that highlighted compelling preclinical data demonstrating that TRE515 outperformed Johnson & Johnson’s market-leading drug, Stelara. TRE-515 blocked inflammatory bowel disease symptoms in mice by selectively limiting activated CD4 T-cell proliferation.

“This continued NIH funding validates Trethera’s innovative approach of targeting dCK, a key metabolic vulnerability in autoreactive immune cells causing Crohn’s disease,” said Ken Schultz, MD, chairman and CEO of Trethera. “We are accelerating TRE-515 development as a first-in-class therapy for Crohn’s patients with high unmet medical needs.”

In its written summary, the NIH peer review panel said, “TRE-515 is the only dCK inhibitor in development, so this approach is highly innovative… supported by strong preliminary data that TRE-515 is noninferior to current standard of care therapies… TRE-515 is not strongly immunosuppressive and has a favorable safety profile… oral administration will make it especially attractive… exciting potential and the commercialization plan is exceptional.”

Beyond Crohn’s disease, TRE-515 is also being evaluated in Phase I clinical trials for solid tumors and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). With dual potential across cancer and inflammatory diseases, the TRE-515 development program represents a broad platform to transform patient outcomes.