SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. , a biotechnology company focused on the development of compounds for the treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic disease, today announced that on September 23, 2009, it received a deficiency letter from The NASDAQ Stock Market notifying the Company of its failure to regain compliance with the board independence requirements, as set forth in Listing Rules 5605(b)(1) and 5605(c)(2)(A), respectively (the “Independence Rules”), and that the Company’s securities are, therefore, subject to delisting from The NASDAQ Capital Market. The Company had previously announced that due to the passing of Richard L. Anderson, who served as an independent director on the Company’s Board of Directors and as a member of the Audit Committee, Compensation Committee and Nominating and Governance Committee, the Company no longer complied with the Independence Rules. The Company was given until September 17, 2009 to regain compliance with these requirements. The Company will present its written views with respect to this deficiency to the NASDAQ Listing Qualifications Panel (the “Panel”) by September 30, 2009.
The Company has had a hearing with the Panel and presented its plan of compliance with respect to its failure to satisfy the Independence Rules, as well as its plan to satisfy NASDAQ’s minimum $2.5 million stockholders’ equity and $1.00 minimum bid price requirements for continued listing. The Company is awaiting a decision from the Panel. There can be no assurance that the Company will be able to achieve or sustain the requirements under the NASDAQ Listing Rules to insure that it will maintain its NASDAQ listing.
About VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on the development of compounds for the treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic disease. VIA’s lead candidate, VIA-2291, targets a significant unmet medical need: reducing inflammation in plaque, which is an underlying cause of atherosclerosis and its complications, including heart attack and stroke. In addition, VIA’s pipeline of drug candidates includes other compounds to address other underlying causes of cardiovascular disease: high cholesterol, diabetes and inflammation. For more information, visit: http://www.viapharmaceuticals.com.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release may contain “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or to VIA’s future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause VIA’s actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as “may,” “could,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “seek,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “continue” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond VIA’s control and which could materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements.
Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to:
All forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements set forth above. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and VIA undertakes no obligation to update publicly any of these statements in light of new information or future events.
SOURCE VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
CONTACT: James G. Stewart, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial
Officer of VIA Pharmaceuticals, Inc., +1-415-283-2204
Web site: http://www.viapharmaceuticals.com/
