Aldagen, which employs 18 and develops treatments based on adult stem cells, hopes to raise as much as $80.5 million with an initial public offering of stock, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Before the deal can happen, the number of shares for sale and the expected price per share must be determined and filed with the SEC.

If successful, Aldagen would be the first Triangle biotech company to go public since Icagen of Durham did in February 2005.

The market for IPOs has cooled considerably, as the housing slump and U.S. credit crisis have rattled Wall Street. Since January, an average of four deals per month have been completed, according to IPOScoop.com, a research firm. That's down from an average of 28 deals per month since 1970.

But the market has recovered recently, with the Nasdaq climbing more than 12 percent since early March. That could bode well for small technology companies trying to make their public debuts.

Aldagen's IPO aspirations "may be a little premature, but at least they're bellying up to the bar," said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPOScoop.

An IPO would allow Aldagen to raise money to conduct further drug research, expand its manufacturing capacity and bring one of its three promising treatments to market. It would also give its private investors, which include Durham venture capital firms Intersouth Partners and The Aurora Funds, a chance to cash in their stakes.

The company sells cell-based test kits to researchers, generating $211,000 in revenue last year, according to the SEC filing. But it remains unprofitable: Last year, it lost $6.7 million.

Aldagen was founded in 2000 as StemCo Biomedical, based on technology developed at Duke University. It has raised about $48 million in venture capital since then. The company is testing four products in humans. The most advanced would improve cord blood transplants used to treat metabolic diseases in pediatric patients.

Aldagen CEO W. Thomas Amick was not available for comment on Monday. Typically, officials with companies that have proposed IPOs are limited by SEC regulations about how much they can discuss.

Two other Triangle companies that lined up last year to make their Wall Street debuts, Consonus Technologies, a Cary data management company, and Talecris Biotherapeutics of Research Triangle Park, have yet to take the plunge. Biolex Therapeutics, a Pittsboro biotech company, scrapped its IPO plans in February, citing "unfavorable market conditions."

Even if Aldagen is successful, there is no guarantee that it will reward investors. Icagen of Durham trades at $1.50, a fraction of the $8 its shares fetched in the February 2005 IPO.

"The trading price of the shares of our common stock is likely to be volatile, and purchasers of our common stock could incur substantial losses," Aldagen wrote in its SEC filing.

The only biotech company to go public this year, Bioheart of Florida, trades at more than 30 percent less than on the day of its IPO.