Salarius Pharmaceuticals Seeks Nasdaq Compliance Extension Amid Financial Instability

Salarius Pharmaceuticals received a Nasdaq compliance extension for late July 2025 to regain equity standard compliance and by early August 2025 to meet the minimum bid price requirement. The company is working to meet milestones and announced a merger with Decoy Therapeutics to enhance its product pipeline and market positioning. Salarius exhibits significant financial instability, declining revenues, and persistent losses, making its stock highly risky and unattractive to investors.

Houston, July 2, 2025 — Salarius Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: SLRX) has received an additional extension from Nasdaq to regain compliance with the Equity Standard by late July 2025 and to meet the minimum bid price requirement by early August 2025 [1]. This extension follows previous notifications from Nasdaq that the company was not in compliance with these standards due to its stock's closing bid price being below the required minimum and its stockholders' equity falling below the required amount.

The company has been working diligently to meet the necessary milestones and has announced a merger with Decoy Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held preclinical biopharmaceutical company. The merger aims to enhance Salarius' product pipeline and market positioning by incorporating Decoy's innovative peptide conjugate therapeutics and Salarius' oral small molecule protein degrader, SP-3164, into highly targeted peptide-based proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACS) drug candidates [1].

Salarius Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with two drug candidates for patients with cancer. The company's lead candidate, seclidemstat, is being studied in an investigator-initiated Phase 1/2 clinical study at MD Anderson Cancer Center as a potential treatment for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) in patients with limited treatment options [1].

Decoy Therapeutics is leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence tools alongside high-speed synthesis techniques to rapidly design, engineer, and manufacture peptide conjugate drug candidates that target serious unmet medical needs. The company's initial pipeline is focused on respiratory viruses and GI cancers [1].

The proposed merger, if consummated, is expected to facilitate multiple value-creating inflection points with Decoy’s pipeline of peptide conjugate therapeutics engineered by its IMP3ACT platform. The combined company intends to advance Decoy’s lead asset, a pan-coronavirus antiviral, to the filing of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and make progress with its other programs, including a broad-acting antiviral against flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and a peptide drug conjugate targeting GI cancers [1].

Despite the merger, Salarius Pharmaceuticals exhibits significant financial instability, declining revenues, and persistent losses, making its stock highly risky and unattractive to investors. The company's stockholders' equity has fallen below the required minimum, leading to Nasdaq's non-compliance notifications. Salarius must regain compliance with the Nasdaq continued listing requirements to avoid delisting [1].

Salarius and Decoy have executed definitive agreements with unanimous approvals by their respective Boards of Directors. The closing consideration will primarily consist of nonvoting preferred stock of Salarius, and it is expected that following the closing and a post-closing stockholder vote to approve the conversion of the preferred shares into common stock, Decoy investors would own approximately 92.4% of the outstanding shares of the merged company and Salarius stockholders would own approximately 7.6% of the outstanding shares [1].

The merger is subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, including obtaining regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. For further details on the transaction and conditions for closing of the merger, please refer to the Form 8-Ks Salarius filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [1].

References:
[1] https://www.biospace.com/press-releases/salarius-pharmaceuticals-granted-additional-extension-to-regain-compliance-with-nasdaqs-stockholders-equity-standard