ABEONA THERAPEUTICS INC

To the shareholders and the Board of Directors of Abeona Therapeutics Inc

Opinion on the Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheet of Abeona Therapeutics Inc (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2023, the related consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss, statement of stockholders’ equity and statement of cash flows for the year ended December 31, 2023, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the “financial statements”). In our opinion, the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2023, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the year ended December 31, 2023, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Basis for Opinion

These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s financial statements based on our audit. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audit in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audit, we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.

Our audit included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audit provides a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current-period audit of the financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of critical audit matters does not alter in any way our opinion on the financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Direct Placement Offering — Refer to Note 9 to the financial statements

Critical Audit Matter Description

As more fully described in Note 9 to the financial statements, On July 6, 2023, the Company sold 3,284,407 shares of its common stock, and in lieu of shares of common stock, pre-funded warrants exercisable for 2,919,140 shares of common stock (the “2023 Pre-Funded Warrants”), to a group of existing institutional investors for an aggregate purchase price of $25.0 million gross, or $23.0 million net of related costs. The offering price for each share of common stock was $4.03, and the offering price for the 2023 Pre-Funded Warrants was $4.0299, which represents the per share offering price for the Company’s common stock less a $0.0001 per share exercise price for each such 2023 Pre-Funded Warrant. The 2023 Pre-Funded Warrants are immediately exercisable at a nominal exercise price of $0.0001 per share and may be exercised at any time. The prefunded warrants are classified as equity in accordance with ASC 815, Derivatives and Hedging, given the prefunded warrants are indexed to the Company’s own shares of common stock and meet the requirements to be classified in equity.

We identified the assessment of the initial accounting for the Direct Placement Offering, specifically the accounting for the 2023 Pre-Funded Warrants as a critical audit matter because of the complexity in applying the accounting framework and the significant judgments made by management in the determination of the classification of the 2023 Pre-Funded Warrants. Auditing these conclusions involved especially subjective judgment and audit effort.

How the Critical Audit Matter Was Addressed in the Audit

Our audit procedures related to accounting for the 2023 Pre-Funded Warrants included the following, among others:

/s/Deloitte & Touche LLP

Morristown, New Jersey

March 15, 2024

We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2023.

To the Board of Directors and Stockholders

Abeona Therapeutics Inc. and Subsidiaries

Opinion on the Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheet of Abeona Therapeutics Inc. and Subsidiaries (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2022 and the related consolidated statements of operations and comprehensive loss, stockholders’ equity, and cash flows for the year then ended, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the “financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2022, and the results of their operations and their cash flows for the years then ended, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Basis for Opinion

These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these financial statements based on our audit. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (“PCAOB”) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audit in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audit we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the entity’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.

Our audit included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audit also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audit provides a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matters

Critical audit matters are matters arising from the current period audit of the financial statements that were communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relate to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. We determined that there are no critical audit matters.

We served as the Company’s auditor from 2006 to 2023.

/s/WHITLEY PENN LLP

Plano, Texas

March 29, 2023