RepliCel Life Sciences Inc., a Vancouver company that has been developing a cure for baldness, has graduated from the OTCBB (over the counter bulletin board) to the TSX Venture exchange.
RepliCel began trading on the TSX Venture exchange yesterday (January 13) under the symbol RP. It also lists on the OTCBB under the symbol REPCF. The company's stock was valued at $1 per share on its debut on the TSX Venture exchange.
One of the company's founders, Kevin McElwee, RepliCel's chief science officer, heads the hair research laboratory at the University of B.C.
McElwee and Rolf Hoffmann, a senior research scientist in the Department of Dermatology at Phillips University in Marburg, Germany, began collaborating on a process for regrowing hair in 2000.
RepliCel's process involves taking healthy hair follicles from a person's scalp, cultivating the cells responsible for growing hair, and then transplanting them back in areas of the scalp where there is hair loss.
The company conducted its first clinical safety trials in the Eurasian country of Georgia in 2010, and in December, the company announced a technology transfer agreement with Shiseido Co. Ltd., a Japanese hair care and cosmetics company.
Under that agreement, RepliCel received $4.2 million up front and will receive up to $31.5 million in milestone payments.
RepliCel also announced yesterday that it had won a Japanese patent for its hair-loss technology.
In addition to hair regrowth, RepliCel is also applying its core technology to tendon repair to address tendinosis .
It is also developing a medical device – an injector to be used both for the RepliCel hair regrowth treatment as well as other dermatological applications.
