Vaso Active's Odd Pedigree

A familiar stench wafts from Vaso Active(VAPH), the small Massachusetts company that claims to have developed a new treatment for athlete's foot.

The smell spawns memories of the late 1990s IPO market, when any company with a whiff of a business plan, vague stories and an investment bank could sell shares to the public and see them soar.

Skyrocket is the more apt verb for Vaso, which, since going public in mid-December, has seen its shares jump 440% to just below $27. This is for a company with no profits, less than $100,000 in annual sales and seven employees.

Trading in the 1.6 million Vaso shares sold to the public has been frenzied. Over the past two weeks, an average of 1 million shares have changed hands each day. The trading has been so frenetic that even the investment bankers at Kashner Davidson, the small Florida brokerage firm that led the IPO, are expressing dismay.

Perhaps investors also should worry.

For starters, there's the debate about just how amazing its foot-fungus-fighting treatment Termin8, really is.

The company contends the product, with its "revolutionary transdermal drug delivery technology," is a "highly advanced and remarkably effective cure for Athlete's Foot." The company has such high hopes for Termin8, which retails for $19.99, it recently told investors that it foresees a $365 million market for the product. Furthermore, Vaso Active boasts on its Web site that Termin8 has won the endorsement of The American Association of Medical Foot Specialists.

In a recent interview, David Z. Ascher, a New York podiatrist and the foot association's president, seemed more impressed with Termin8's packaging.

"There is no such thing as a miracle cure," Ascher said. "It is as good as any of the other products."

The doctor continued: "The packaging is fantastic. The box is so beautiful."