Panbela Regains Compliance with Nasdaq Listing Standards for Bid Price and Publicly Held Shares Requirements

MINNEAPOLIS, Feb. 15, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Panbela Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: PBLA), (“Panbela”), a clinical stage company developing disruptive therapeutics for the treatment of patients with urgent unmet medical needs, today announced that, has regained compliance with applicable listing standards of The Nasdaq Stock Market (“Nasdaq”) for bid price and publicly held shares.

Nasdaq has issued notice that Panbela has regained compliance for continued listing of its common stock. On February 13, 2024, Panbela received a letter from Nasdaq confirming that Panbela has cured the previously identified minimum bid price and the publicly held shares requirements, under Nasdaq Listing Rules 5550(a)(2) and 5550(a)(4). The Company will be presenting its plan to the Nasdaq Hearings Panel regarding equity compliance.

About Panbela’s Pipeline
The pipeline consists of assets currently in clinical trials with an initial focus on familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), first-line metastatic pancreatic cancer, neoadjuvant pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer prevention and ovarian cancer. The combined development programs have a steady cadence of anticipated catalysts with programs ranging from pre-clinical to registration studies.

Ivospemin (SBP-101)
Ivospemin is a proprietary polyamine analogue designed to induce polyamine metabolic inhibition (PMI) by exploiting an observed high affinity of the compound for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and other tumors. It has shown signals of tumor growth inhibition in clinical studies of metastatic pancreatic cancer patients, demonstrating a median overall survival (OS) of 14.6 months and an objective response rate (ORR) of 48%, both exceeding what is typical for the standard of care of gemcitabine + nab-paclitaxel suggesting potential complementary activity with the existing FDA-approved standard chemotherapy regimen. In data evaluated from clinical studies to date, ivospemin has not shown exacerbation of bone marrow suppression and peripheral neuropathy, which can be chemotherapy-related adverse events. Serious visual adverse events have been evaluated and patients with a history of retinopathy or at risk of retinal detachment will be excluded from future SBP-101 studies. The safety data and PMI profile observed in the previous Panbela-sponsored clinical trials provide support for continued evaluation of ivospemin in the ASPIRE trial.