Orthocell (ASX:OCC) chief Paul Anderson has declined to put a valuation on his company after Wednesday’s 356 per cent run, saying the sky is the limit for the regenerative medicine biotech.

Shares closed at 52.5c, a gigantic one-day gain on Tuesday’s close of 11.5c, and continued to climb yesterday, reaching as high as 78c, equating to a mammoth 578 per cent gain. They’d eventually settled at 42c by the close.

That was thanks to early results from a trial of its collagen scaffold technology CelGro in patients with damaged nerves — patients reported regained sensation and muscle function in affected limbs, as well as an 83 per cent improvement in muscle power.

Anderson attributed the meteoric share price rise not only to the results, but to 18 months of communication with shareholders regarding its portfolio, which also includes bone, tendon and cartilage repair.

“With what we’ve been talking about for the last 18 months, the unique characteristics of our technology and the different types of markets, I think the market has gone, ‘Hello! this is correct, real stuff’,” he told Stockhead. “It is a reward for the hard work we have done articulating the story.

“There has been a realisation within the market that we were grossly undervalued.”

Asked for an accurate valuation, Anderson said he would not put a number on it. “It would be foolish of me to put a value on it because the sky is the limit,” he said.

“What makes large acquirers excited are regulatory approvals, data and thoughts from key opinion leaders and we have each of those pieces and we’ve told the market previously that we are attracting interest.”

78c is not an all-time high for Orthocell, which hit 80c in August 2015, but Anderson says those highs were due to “blue sky”, a common term companies use when trying to appeal to investors by talking about the future possibilities.

“But we are now successfully transitioning from research and development to execution with clear pathways to market.”

As for partnering with a larger pharmaceutical company, Anderson said Orthocell would only take the right offer, similar to Paradigm’s Paul Rennie, who recently told Stockhead his company was in “no rush” to find a partner.

“It is a little different as Paradigm is a drug company and we’re a medical devices company, but we are certainly not going to be giving value away,” Anderson said.

“You don’t give the baby away before it has reached a certain degree of maturity and we have a lot of opportunity ahead of us.”

He foreshadowed an eventual move into women’s health, saying there is a “massive” market for its scaffold in issues such as hernia repair, vaginal prolapse and pelvic organ collapse.

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