AN 18-month-old company is joining the junior stock market to help it find medical treatments for dogs that chase their tails.

Accura Pharma, which will be valued at £42m when the shares start trading tomorrow, claims many dogs that chase and bite their tails are suffering from the canine equivalent of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Bernard Ross, Accura’s chief executive, said that dogs that snarl and bite often need treating for dominance and aggression.

The firm plans to adapt proven human medicines to treat the same conditions in dogs and cats. It hopes to have its first products on the market in two years.

Accura, which is joining Plus-quoted, the small-company market that emerged out of Ofex, represents a return to the City for Kevin Leech, the northwest entrepreneur who went bankrupt a few years ago.

Leech made his fortune with ML Laboratories, an early biotech firm, and his investments in the dotcom bubble briefly made him a paper billionaire. Leech acquired a long list of trophy assets, but the dotcom collapse destroyed his finances.

Accura’s prospectus shows that Leech’s Condor Trust owns a stake of 28.5%. It also says that Accura’s subsidiary owns a portfolio of Nasdaq OTC stocks that were valued at £56.5m in April.

A more recent valuation of the entire company by Bioquest Consulting suggests that it could be worth as much as £135m — more than three times the value it has accepted on the Plus market.

Accura has yet to generate its first revenues.

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