Monash University

A major international trial has found that daily fish oil supplements significantly reduced life-threatening cardiovascular events in dialysis patients. People who took four grams per day had a 43% lower risk of heart attack, stroke, cardiac death, or vascular-related amputations compared with those on placebo. The findings stand out because few treatments have successfully lowered heart risk in this high-risk group.A daily fish oil supplement may help lower the risk of serious cardiovascular complications in people undergoing dialysis for kidney failure. The finding comes from a large international clinical trial jointly led in Australia by Monash Health and the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash University. The research, known as the PISCES trial, included 1,228 participants receiving dialysis treatment at 26 sites across Australia and Canada. The results were presented at the American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week 2025 and published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Major Clinical Trial Shows 43 Percent Drop in Serious Heart Events Participants who took four grams of fish oil each day experienced significantly fewer major cardiovascular events than those who received a placebo. The supplement contained the omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, which are naturally found in fish oil. Overall, the group taking fish oil had a 43 percent lower rate of serious cardiovascular events. These included heart attack, stroke, cardiac death and vascular related amputations. Adjunct Professor Kevan Polkinghorne, a nephrologist at Monash Health and adjunct in the School of Clinical Sciences, led the Australian portion of the trial. "Patients on dialysis have extremely high cardiovascular risk, and very few therapies have been shown to reduce that risk," Professor Polkinghorne said. "In a field where many trials have been negative, this is a significant finding. "Dialysis patients typically have much lower levels of EPA and DHA than the general population. This may help explain the magnitude of benefit observed in this group." Findings Apply Specifically to Hemodialysis Patients Professor Polkinghorne emphasized that the results apply specifically to people undergoing haemodialysis for kidney failure. He noted that the findings should not be generalized to healthy individuals or to other groups of patients. The Australian portion of the study received support from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). Trial coordination was managed by the Australasian Kidney Trials Network (AKTN). About 200 participants from Australia took part in the study, including 44 treated at Monash Health. The international leadership of the PISCES trial was provided by Professor Charmaine Lok and colleagues from the University Health Network in Toronto and the University of Calgary.

The US Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is committing up to $158 million to launch a five-year effort aimed at creating the first wave of targeted lymphatic therapies, an area long implicated in chronic disease, but so far devoid of any FDA-approved drugs.The so-called GLIDE programme is meant to provide a new toolkit of therapies that get to the root causes of chronic diseases caused by underlying lymphatic disease, rather than just treating symptoms.The lymphatic system can fail in four key ways: blocked or abnormal fluid flow of lymph fluid, leaky vessels that cause swelling, faulty pumps or valves, and lymphatic vessels that grow too much or too little. According to ARPA-H, the programme has selected teams to tackle each of these problems via the development of new drugs, devices and physical interventions aimed at relieving, repairing and regenerating damaged lymphatic vessels.First oral therapy?Funding recipients include Seaport Therapeutics, which has secured up to $15 million to advance GlyphCele, an oral prodrug of the COX-2 inhibitor celecoxib, which Pfizer markets as Celebrex. GlyphCele, developed in collaboration with Monash University, is engineered with Seaport's Glyph platform, in which drugs are absorbed through the intestinal lymphatic system like dietary fats and transported into circulation.If successful, the treatment could eventually help address lymphatic inflammation linked to metabolic disease and pancreatic cancer."The work behind GlyphCele represents an opportunity to address fundamental aspects of disease biology that current treatments overlook," Daniel Bonner, Seaport's SVP of platform, said in a company release. "While our internal focus remains on developing neuropsychiatric medicines, we believe the Glyph platform has broad applicability across diseases."Another industry recipient, Ropirio Therapeutics, is developing a potentially first-in-class agent designed to prevent lymphatic vessel leakage and collapse.Fixing damaged vesselsIn the academic sphere, Rice University was awarded $18.2 million to pursue a regenerative therapy aimed at restoring damaged lymphatic vessels and ultimately provide a cure for lymphoedema. The treatment, given as a subcutaneous injection, comprises engineered human retinal pigment epithelial cells, already FDA‑approved for degenerative eye disease.The cells, packaged in a protective hydrogel so they can survive and work inside the body while staving off immune attack, carry built‑in genetic "circuits" that release therapeutic proteins to repair damaged vessels. However, these would be activated only when switched on by small‑molecule regulators, allowing doctors to control when and how much medicine is made. The goal is a single, targeted outpatient treatment instead of lifelong therapy. Preclinical studies have shown complete regrowth of vessels toward healthy lymph nodes and an 80% reduction in oedema, according to researchers.Other GLIDE recipients include Stanford University, Georgia Tech Research Corporation, 3DT Holdings and LymphaTech.

The lymphatic system is implicated in causing or worsening heart failure, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and numerous other chronic diseases.\n The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) has announced up to $158 million in funding over the next five years to support research teams developing new medicines that target the lymphatic system.Under the Groundbreaking Lymphatic Interventions and Drug Exploration (GLIDE) program, recipients will seek to develop drugs and other interventions for an organ system that has long been neglected by medical science, program manager Kimberley Steele, M.D., Ph.D., said on a March 3 press call.“It\'s been an afterthought; it\'s been underappreciated,” she said. Steele personally dealt with this neglect while navigating her son’s diagnosis with an ultrarare disease that affects the lymphatic system, she added.No medicines or devices specifically targeting the lymphatic system have been approved by the FDA, according to a March 3 release from ARPA-H.The experience made Steele put her career on hold to become a special projects director at the Lymphatic Education & Research Network, which she then left to join ARPA-H in November 2023.“ARPA-H wanted a really tough problem,” Steele said, “and I pitched the lymphatic system as a really tough problem to solve.”The lymphatic system includes vessels that transport fluids throughout the body. It is tightly connected with the immune system but also interplays with just about every other part of the body, too, and is implicated in causing or worsening heart failure, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and numerous other chronic diseases, according to the release.Steele’s first lymph-focused effort, announced in January, focuses on diagnostics. The goal with GLIDE is to develop new therapeutic and physical interventions.GLIDE funding recipients “will build the first comprehensive therapeutic toolkit so healthcare providers can treat underlying lymphatic problems early and effectively,” ARPA-H Director Alicia Jackson, Ph.D., said in the agency’s release. One of the biotech funding recipients is Boston-based Seaport Therapeutics, which will receive up to $15 million in a collaborative project with Australia’s Monash University. The goal is to develop a new oral medicine, derived from Pfizer’s Celebrex (celecoxib) and called GlyphCele, that targets the lymphatic system to treat metabolic diseases and pancreatic cancer.“The work behind GlyphCele represents an opportunity to address fundamental aspects of disease biology that current treatments overlook,” Seaport co-founder and platform leader Daniel Bonner, Ph.D., said in a March 3 release. “While our internal focus remains on developing neuropsychiatric medicines, we believe the Glyph platform has broad applicability across diseases, and we’re pleased to advance its potential beyond CNS.”Unlike Seaport, fellow Boston-area biotech and GLIDE beneficiary Ropirio Therapeutics is singularly focused on lymph system work. With its award, Ropirio will work on a drug to prevent lymph vessels from leaking, which causes fluid to build up and tissue to become inflamed. The startup spun out of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University in September 2024.Leaky vessels are one of the four key problems that can arise in the lymphatic system, Steele highlighted. The other three are blockages, faulty valves and overgrowing lymph nodules, like those experienced by her son.  ARPA-H’s new lymphatic effort was announced on the same day as a $75.8 million program called OCULAB, which seeks to develop tech for continuous blood monitoring through tear ducts. Both follow a $144 million anti-aging initiative unveiled late last month.The Biden-era program’s new leader Jackson previously told Fierce that her goal is to “win the biotech race” against China by supporting innovative approaches industry would never dare touch due to their risk.