The company has been able to acquire government funding (albeit a very modest amount) when things were most bleak. Now they are working on obtaining investment dollars through an investment bank whose managing director is presumably the brother of the COO. This is a course most penny stocks do not take. Rather, they just wither and die, oftentimes heavily diluting equity interests with nothing to show for it.
The waiting is painful but I would argue long-term shareholders have not been financially harmed up to this point