CardioVascular BioTherapeutics, Inc. (CVBT), a biopharmaceutical company, has signed a collaborative research agreement with Vance Gardner, M.D., executive director of the Orthopaedic Education and Research Institute of Southern California, to conduct a feasibility study in patients with chronic back pain caused by degenerative disc disease to determine if back pain is related to poor blood flow and decreased nutrition of the discs in the lower back.

According to published reports, more than 20 million people in the US suffer from degenerative disc disease, one of the most common causes of lower back pain. The typical individual with degenerative disc disease is an active and otherwise healthy person in his or her thirties or forties. Most patients with degenerative disc disease will have some underlying chronic lower back pain with intermittent episodes of severe lower back pain. The severe episodes of lower back pain will generally last from a few days to a few months before the patient goes back to his or her baseline level of chronic pain.

"Our new clinical collaboration with Dr. Gardner is an exciting extension of our ongoing clinical program within our company," said Thomas J. Stegmann, M.D., co-founder and chief medical officer of CVBT. "Cardiovascular disease results from a lack of proper blood flow and extensive research has shown that if blood flow is increased to the affected tissues, patients may experience an increase in life expectancy and quality of life. If Dr. Gardner establishes that there is a causal relationship between lower back pain and decreased blood flow and nutrition to the area, we may initiate studies using Cardio Vascu-Grow to see whether it may be effective in treating degenerative disc disease."

Vance Gardner, M.D. is a board-certified orthopaedic surgeon who has contributed seminal advances in spine and spinal cord research over the past two decades. He has published numerous original articles in peer-reviewed medical journals and serves as an invited reviewer of the journal Spine. Dr. Gardner obtained his M.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and received his orthopaedic surgical training at the University of California, Irvine before specializing with a one year spinal surgery fellowship in Canada. He joined the faculty of the Orthopaedic Surgery Department at the University of California, Irvine in 1986 and remained a faculty member until 1996. Recently, he was appointed the executive director of the Orthopaedic Education and Research Institute of Southern California based in Orange, California.

CVBT is a biopharmaceutical company developing drug candidates with Cardio Vascu-Grow as the active ingredient for a number of diseases characterized by inadequate blood flow to a tissue or organ. The company is currently conducting two FDA-authorized clinical trials: one in coronary artery disease in no-option heart patients, and one in impaired wound healing seen in diabetics.