Aliso Viejo, CA-based Vertos Medical is a medical device company focused on providing minimally invasive alternatives for surgical procedures to treat lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) a degenerative, age-related narrowing of the lower spinal canal.. The Company’s first proprietary platform technology, MILD® (Minimally Invasive Lumbar Decompression), is the first minimally invasive surgical treatment for LSS.

Can you believe that 129 million adults suffer from back pain across the seven major markets, approximately 60% of which is acute pain and 40% chronic pain. The population who seeks health care is just a fraction of this total, estimated to be maybe 10% which nonetheless accounts for a sizable presenting segment. A bit nebulous, back pain is pain or discomfort of variable duration, which is felt in the upper, middle, or lower back which may originate from bones, facet joints, muscles, ligaments, blood vessels or other components of the back. There is a spectrum of causes, some of which may include: referred pain, muscle strain, herniated discs, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, infections, tumors and other causes.

Yours truly finds this market to be of particular interest; for it was two snowy seasons ago where a shortcut across an icy Denver parking lot resulted in a slip – which has yielded a back that has never been the same, and to this date, besides the massages, the doctor visits, the chiropractors and the acupuncture, must sleep nightly on my stomach to avoid the pressure and discomfort on the lumbar, but I digress…

MILD® is intended to provide immediate and lasting relief from the LSS condition, which affects 900K to 1.5 million patients per year in the US.

PRODUCTS RECEIVING 510(k) CLEARANCE

To enable the MILD® procedure, Vertos Medical has developed a set of proprietary devices that have received FDA 510(k) clearance to market the devices for use in percutaneous lumbar decompressive procedures to treat various spinal conditions. Each set is disposable and sterile and consists of: Tissue Sculpter, Trocar and Handle, Portal, Bone Sculpter, Surgical Clamp and Accessory Guide.

Following epidurography the MILD® Trocar and Portal are advanced under fluoroscopic guidance to the intended treatment area. The Trocar is removed leaving the Portal in place, creating a working channel for advancement of the Tissue Sculpter Device and the Bone Sculpter.

Under fluoroscopy the Tissue Sculpter is advanced to the target treatment area and activated. The Tissue Sculpter excises tissue or ligamentum flavum. This step is repeated several times until sufficient tissue is removed. As an accessory, the Bone Sculpter is used to remove portions of the boney lamina to open the interlaminar space. This step is also repeated several times until sufficient bone fragments have been removed.

Following is an animation of the MILD® procedure.

FINANCING

Vertos had remained stealthy in its early years and thus the following values are being teased out of Reg D filings with the SEC rather than often more reliable and or informative company releases. It appears as though the Company got underway circa 2005 with a $1.3M seeding coming from DFJ Mercury Venture Partners and Aweida Venture Partners, with an additional $12.7M invested in 2007. A $12M Series C financing was announced in 3Q08 with new investors CHL Medical Partners and Foundation Medical Partners joining prior investors. The latest Series D round, announced in October 2009, totals $15.5M adding ONSET Ventures along with earlier investors.

The Company’s intended use-of-proceeds will be used to aid the commercialization of the MILD platform procedure.

A quick aside – Vertos features all things web 2.0, very cool and smart of them to be doing, from embeddable video (for example see above), a Facebook fan page, Twitter account and RSS feed – all tools that a commercial-stage entity should be leveraging for brand and product promotion. Tangentially a very interesting upcoming meeting in November will be the FDA examining these, and certain to be forthcoming social media tools as related to FDA-regulated medical products; read more about it [HERE].