TRex Bio Targets $111.3M IPO, As Retension And Lycia Join A Busy 2026 Listing Window

TRex Bio has set terms for an initial public offering that it estimates would deliver about $111.3 million in net proceeds if its shares price at the midpoint of a $14 to $16 range. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday, the Eli Lilly-backed company said it plans to offer 8.3 million shares, with net proceeds rising to $128.7 million if underwriters fully exercise an option to buy an additional 1.3 million shares at the same price.

The filing arrived alongside similar disclosures from Retension Pharmaceuticals and Lycia Therapeutics, extending a 2026 run of biotech IPO activity. The common thread is not scale: TRex is seeking materially more cash than Retension’s projected $33.8 million raise, while Lycia’s filing is framed around advancing a broader protein degrader pipeline rather than a single financing target disclosed in the report. The signal for investors is that the window is supporting multiple biotech profiles at once, from autoimmune immunology to cardiovascular disease and targeted degradation.

The Financing Plans

TRex said it had around $91 million in the bank after an $84 million series B in 2024 and a $50 million financing at the start of this year. The South San Francisco-based company, which emerged in 2021 with a $59 million series A, has built its pitch around a platform for discovering ways to modulate regulatory T cells, or Tregs, a subset of T cells involved in tissue inflammation.

Retension, based in Virginia, told investors it plans to offer 3.3 million shares priced between $11 and $13. The company expects that to bring in $33.8 million, increasing to $39.4 million if underwriters purchase an additional 495,000 shares also priced at $12.

Lycia also joined the IPO queue, aiming to fund a pipeline of protein degraders from a position of relative balance-sheet strength. The South San Francisco company entered the second half of this year with $148.1 million in the bank after raising $50 million in 2020, a $70 million series B in 2021, a $106.6 million series C in 2024 and another $75 million in June.

Where The Cash Goes

TRex’s filing gives one of the clearer examples of how public investors are being asked to fund defined clinical milestones. The company expects to spend $90 million to bankroll phase 2 trials for its tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 agonist, TRB-061, in atopic dermatitis and to move the therapy into other autoimmune and inflammatory diseases including alopecia areata. Topline data from an ongoing phase 1 trial in atopic dermatitis is due in mid-2027. Another $10 million is earmarked to take CD30 agonist TRB-071 into the clinic in a phase 1 trial of healthy volunteers.

Retension likewise tied most of its proposed proceeds to near-term development work. It has allocated $18 million to complete a phase 2b study of RTN-001 in patients with uncontrolled hypertension and another $10 million toward a phase 3 study in the same setting. RTN-001 is a once-daily, oral, small-molecule phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor that the company says is designed to reduce blood pressure by potentiating nitric oxide signaling.

For Lycia, the priorities start with LCA-0061, a catalytic lysosomal targeting chimera, or cataLYTAC, degrader intended to deplete immunoglobulin E for food allergy and other allergic diseases. That candidate is already in a phase 1 trial. Lycia also plans to move another cataLYTAC degrader, LCA-0062, into the clinic for food allergy, alongside LCA-0321, a LYTAC degrader for Grave’s disease.

Strategic Readthrough

TRex enters the market with notable pharmaceutical ties. Johnson & Johnson signed a collaboration with the company a year after it launched, and Lilly paid $55 million in 2023 to exercise an option on an immune effector cell modulator that has since entered the clinic. TRex also said Lilly has expressed interest in participating in the IPO. That combination of platform validation, existing cash and a staged spending plan may help explain why TRex is attempting the largest raise of the three.

Retension’s pitch is narrower and more binary, centered on whether RTN-001 can succeed where first-generation phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors such as Viagra did not establish a blood-pressure franchise. The company said RTN-001 has already shown a clinically meaningful reduction in systolic and diastolic blood pressure in pilot phase 2 studies, while arguing the asset’s increased bioavailability and increased distribution to muscular arteries could differentiate it.

Lycia’s case is different again: it is offering public investors exposure to a degradation platform with multiple shots on goal at a time when 2026 financing conditions have improved enough to support earlier clinical stories. The broader market backdrop cited in the report includes large listings from Parabilis Medicines and Kailera Therapeutics, as well as ADARx Pharmaceuticals’ $446.3 million upsized IPO. For the sector, these three filings suggest the IPO market is not just open for the largest names, but for companies that can map new capital directly to the next clinical inflection points.