Caribou Biosciences regains compliance with Nasdaq $1.00 bid price rule

The notice

Caribou Biosciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRBU) said in a Form 8-K dated June 23, 2025 that it had received a written notice from the staff of the Nasdaq Stock Market, LLC on June 18, 2025. The notice said the company had regained compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5450(a)(1). The company disclosed it under Item 8.01, other events.

The rule requires companies listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market to keep a minimum closing bid price of $1.00 a share. According to the notice, the closing bid price was $1.00 or more from June 3, 2025 to June 17, 2025. That window is about two weeks. The 8-K does not give the closing prices on those days, the bid price before June 3, or the price after June 17, so the margin above the floor cannot be measured from it. It also does not say whether the company took any step, such as a reverse stock split, to lift the price.

The company

Caribou is a clinical-stage CRISPR genome-editing biopharmaceutical company based in Berkeley, California. It is incorporated in Delaware. Its annual report, filed March 10, 2025, says its genome-editing platform, which includes a technology it calls chRDNA, is used to edit allogeneic cell therapies more precisely.

Allogeneic CAR-T products are made in advance from healthy donor cells rather than from each patient's own cells. The annual report says this is meant to give broad patient access, rapid treatment and greater manufacturing scale. It also says the targets Caribou uses, including CD19, BCMA and CLL-1, have already shown clinical proof of concept with autologous CAR-T therapies. The company says it uses its chRDNA technologies to armor its cell therapies through checkpoint disruption, immune cloaking or both.

The pipeline

The annual report lists four clinical development programs in hematologic malignancies and autoimmune diseases:

• CB-010, an allogeneic anti-CD19 CAR-T therapy, is being studied in relapsed or refractory B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the ANTLER phase 1 trial.
• CB-010 is also being studied in lupus nephritis and extrarenal lupus in the GALLOP phase 1 trial.
• CB-011, an allogeneic anti-BCMA CAR-T therapy, is being studied in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma in the CaMMouflage phase 1 trial.
• CB-012, an allogeneic anti-CLL-1 CAR-T therapy, is being studied in relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia in the AMpLify phase 1 trial.

CB-010 has regenerative medicine advanced therapy designation for relapsed or refractory large B cell lymphoma, plus fast track designations for relapsed or refractory B-NHL and refractory systemic lupus erythematosus. CB-011 has fast track designation for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, and CB-012 for relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia. Each study the business section names is listed as phase 1.

What the notice leaves out

The 8-K is a single compliance item. It contains no financial statements, and it does not discuss the company's cash, losses or the trials, so it does not show how the company will fund its phase 1 studies.

The notice also says nothing about the share count, the stock's trading volume or any reverse split. The stock met the floor for about two weeks, and the 8-K gives no reason to expect it to stay above $1.00.

The case for allogeneic cells

The annual report supports the approach with market figures. It says only approximately two of every 10 patients with second-line relapsed or refractory diffuse large B cell lymphoma receive commercially available autologous CAR-T therapies. It says more than 50% of patients who receive autologous CAR-T cells need bridging therapy, and approximately 40% of second-line patients cannot wait for autologous therapy. These are the company's claims about the market for existing treatments, not results for its own products.

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