By Matthew Willett

Aastrom Biosciences Inc. filed a shelf registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission covering 6.35 million shares.

At Thursday's opening price, $1.375, the registered shares would gross Aastrom $8.731 million. Aastrom's stock (NASDAQ: ASTM) closed Thursday at $1.25, down 12.5 cents.

The Ann Arbor, Mich., company last financed itself through a $6 million single-investor placement of 2.26 million shares and three-year warrants.

Its initial public offering in February 1997 grossed the company $21 million through the sale of 3.25 million shares at $7 per share. A secondary offering in December of that year offered 2.2 million shares of 5.5 percent convertible preferred stock at $5 per share, giving the company an additional $11 million.

The company's largest financing to date yielded it $38 million in 1996. A second private financing in 1998 yielded the company $5 million.

Aastrom, founded in 1989, develops technologies for cell therapies. Its lead product, Replicell, is a cell culture system and instrumentation platform for single-use cell therapy kits.

Replicell received approval for European marketing in 1999, but marketing was stopped, as was a pivotal U.S. trial, until additional financing was available. The program toward U.S. regulatory approval is recommenced, as is the European marketing effort.

Aastrom also ventures into stem cell technologies, developing its SC-I and CB-I Therapy Kits for production of umbilical cord blood cells for use in cancer therapy.

The company said in its registration it intends to use any proceeds from shares sold off the shelf for general corporate expenses, and may use proceeds to fund its clinical development programs.

As of Sept. 30, Aastrom had about $12.7 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. The company has about 33.84 million shares outstanding.

Majority owners of Aastrom include COBE BCT Inc., which owns 21 percent of the company; state treasurer of the State of Michigan, a 19 percent stakeholder; and the Kaufmann Fund, 9 percent owners.