LOS ANGELES, July 17 — On the sixth floor of a modest research building near the UCLA campus, a small biotech company is chasing a different kind of cancer therapy. Trethera Corporation, founded here in 2015, is betting on metabolism. The company’s drug, TRE-515, has completed Phase 1 clinical trials in patients with advanced solid tumors.
The results, published in a 2025 review co-authored with UCLA, detail the drug’s safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics. For now, that is the full public record.
A different target
Most cancer drugs attack DNA directly — slicing, blocking, or poisoning the genetic machinery inside tumor cells. TRE-515 takes a different path. It is a small-molecule inhibitor of an enzyme called deoxycytidine kinase, or dCK.
By selectively blocking dCK, the drug disrupts the salvage pathway of nucleotide synthesis — a metabolic shortcut that cancer cells rely on to build the building blocks for rapid division. In preclinical studies using mouse models, TRE-515 reduced tumor growth in pancreatic cancer and leukemia.
Those results, while early, point to a mechanism that starves cancer cells of raw materials rather than poisoning them outright. The company has not yet announced Phase 2 trial initiation. That leaves patients and investors in a waiting pattern.
The science behind it
Trethera’s lead scientist, Dr. Gary J. Peltz, is a co-author of the 2025 review. The research represents years of work on a novel approach — targeting cancer metabolism rather than genetics.
The idea is not new, but making it work in humans has proved difficult. The Phase 1 trial was designed to answer basic questions: Is the drug safe?
Can the body tolerate it? How does it move through the bloodstream? Those answers are now in hand.
What comes next — whether the drug actually shrinks tumors in a larger group of patients — remains unproven. On the ground in Los Angeles, the company operates quietly.
No new announcements have emerged from Trethera’s headquarters since the Phase 1 data was published.
What to watch
The next milestone will be the initiation of Phase 2 trials. Without a date from the company, the timeline remains uncertain. For now, TRE-515 exists as a promising but unproven candidate in a field hungry for new approaches.
Pancreatic cancer and leukemia both have notoriously poor outcomes with existing treatments. A drug that works by cutting off a cancer cell’s fuel supply would represent a genuine breakthrough — if it clears the coming clinical hurdles. Consult your doctor for medical advice.
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