Privately held LipoScience is making another run at going public.

The company, which is focused on blood testing technology utilizing nuclear magnetic resonance technology., disclosed its initial public offering of stock plans in a filing with the SEC on Thursday. The target price is $86.25 million.

LipoScience plans to offer just over 17.7 million shares.

Launched in 2004 with science licensed from N.C. State University, LipoScience says in the filing that it has more than 30 employees focused on research and development alone. Initially known as LipoMed, it changed the name to LipoScience in 2002.

The Raleigh-based company, which tried for an IPO in 2002 worth $100 million and later at $70 million before withdrawing it, files new plan to go public.

Backed by venture capital investors, LipoScience has grown to a $40 million a year company.

However, the company is losing money. In the first quarter of this year, LipoScience reported a loss of $485,000 on revenues of $10.5 million.

In the SEC filing, LipoScience reports that it was profitable in both 2009 and 2010 with revenues of $34.7 million and $39.4 million respectively. Profits were $250,000 in 2009 and $4.3 million last year.

In 2008, LipoScience generated nearly $29 million in revenue and lost $3.6 million.

“Although we generated net income for the years ended December 31, 2009 and 2010, we incurred a net loss of $0.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2011 and have incurred significant losses since our inception,” the company reported. “As of March 31, 2011, we had an accumulated deficit of $49.2 million. We do not expect to be profitable for the full year 2011, and we anticipate experiencing losses over the next several years as we increase expenses in pursuit of our growth strategy and our efforts to increase market share for the NMR LipoProfile test and develop new assays.

“We expect to continue to incur significant operating expenses and anticipate that our expenses and losses will increase …,” the filing says. It cited sales force expansion and marketing, seeking FDA approval for a new clinical analyzer, development of new tests, and expansion in various areas as among the reasons for the losses.

Read the SEC filing here.

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