AdvListBox text problem

This is probably a stupid question and something I should know.
I am trying to convert our legacy APP that used RzListBox to AdvListBox. Some of the items being added to the list from an existing Datbase have the following text ''. These are added fine but when the list on the form the items with <> are represented by a blank Line. Is there a way to get around this other than changing all the data to get rid of the <>. This would mean changing about 15 DLL's as well as the main code.
Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Please use < and > to have the HTML engine render this as < and >