Cytokinetics, Inc. (Nasdaq: CYTK) today announced the recipients of
its Communications Fellowship Grant program, an annual grant
program intended to support increased capacity in communications,
awareness building and community engagement for nonprofit
organizations.
Five grants in the amount of $20,000 each were
awarded this year to patient advocacy organizations serving the
heart failure, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS), and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)
communities. The grants will support projects to increase
awareness, elevate community outreach, create spaces to foster
connections within patient communities, expand education, and
provide resources for patients, caregivers, families and
researchers.
“After a competitive review process encompassing
many proposals submitted, we are pleased to provide support to
these impressive organizations to advance their communications
initiatives to better serve their patient communities,” said Diane
Weiser, Cytokinetics’ Vice President of Corporate Communications
& Investor Relations. “The selected recipients presented
creative, innovative and thoughtful strategies to connect with
patient and caregiver communities and amplify their messages. We
look forward to seeing how these grants may support each
organization’s goals and ultimately benefit patients living with
heart failure, HCM, ALS and SMA.”
The recipients of the 2020 Cytokinetics
Communications Fellowship Grants are:
The ALS Association
Louisiana-Mississippi Chapter: The ALS Association
Louisiana-Mississippi Chapter serves patients in rural locations,
who often face challenges such as access to care and transportation
to ALS clinics. The grant will support the launch of an educational
program focused on caregivers, medical providers and patients,
including quarterly caregiver luncheons. The grant will also
support the hiring of part time staff to support social media,
event promotion, media outreach, website content and other
promotional materials.
Children’s Cardiomyopathy
Foundation: Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation helps
parents cope with the challenges of managing a child with a chronic
heart condition and has recognized that capturing patient and
family perspective is an important step in evaluating care and
improving diagnosis and treatment. The organization intends to hire
part time staff to support funding, development and management of a
pilot storytelling project. The project will involve the
development of an app that allows patients and families to record
and share their experience with cardiomyopathy online.
Fighting for Kaiden: Fighting
for Kaiden enhances the lives of people with SMA by raising
awareness and providing support to affected families. The
organization will use the grant to support the formation of
SMAExchange.org, an online and app-based community for people
living with SMA that will provide educational content, updates on
clinical trials, and opportunities to connect with other patients.
In addition, the platform will allow patients to input their own
real-world data and medical information and provide it to
healthcare professionals, and to the research community as
de-identified natural history data.
The Heart Failure Patient
Foundation: The Heart Failure Patient Foundation was
created by the American Association of Heart Failure Nurses (AAHFN)
to improve the lives of patients with heart failure by providing
patients, families, caregivers and nurses with information,
education, networking opportunities and other resources. The grant
will support the development of a strategic communications plan to
launch the Foundation, including website optimization, digital
advertising, content development and social media channel
management.
Les Turner ALS Foundation: The
Les Turner ALS Foundation provides comprehensive care and support
to people living with ALS and their families in the Chicago area.
The organization recognizes that families facing ALS are
overwhelmed by symptom management, equipment and medications, which
may lead to delays in decision making, thereby causing adverse
impacts on health outcomes and increases in caregiver burden. With
this grant the organization intends to create a Decision Tree that
will simplify complex medical decisions, clarify patient and family
preferences and values, and facilitate conversations between
patients, families and multidisciplinary care teams. The
organization plans to form and facilitate focus groups and conduct
user testing of the Decision Tree prior to sharing it online as a
validated tool for use by the broader ALS community.
About Cytokinetics’ Communications
Fellowship Program
Cytokinetics’ Communications Fellowship Program
is awarded annually to patient advocacy organizations serving
patients with ALS, heart failure, HCM or SMA to provide funding in
support of communications, awareness and outreach. The goal of the
Fellowship is to assist patient advocacy organizations by
increasing resources in order to better support patient communities
and bring increased awareness to the disease in the communities
they serve.
About Cytokinetics
Cytokinetics is a late-stage biopharmaceutical
company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing
first-in-class muscle activators and next-in-class muscle
inhibitors as potential treatments for debilitating diseases in
which muscle performance is compromised and/or declining. As a
leader in muscle biology and the mechanics of muscle performance,
the company is developing small molecule drug candidates
specifically engineered to impact muscle function and
contractility. Cytokinetics is collaborating with Amgen Inc.
(Amgen) to develop omecamtiv mecarbil, a novel cardiac muscle
activator. Omecamtiv mecarbil is the subject of an international
clinical trials program in patients with heart failure including
GALACTIC-HF and METEORIC-HF. Amgen holds an exclusive worldwide
license to develop and commercialize omecamtiv mecarbil with a
sublicense held by Servier for commercialization in Europe and
certain other countries. Cytokinetics is collaborating
with Astellas Pharma Inc. (Astellas) to develop reldesemtiv, a
fast skeletal muscle troponin activator (FSTA). Astellas currently
holds an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialize
reldesemtiv. Licenses held by Amgen and Astellas are subject to
specified co-development and co-commercialization rights of
Cytokinetics. Cytokinetics is also developing CK-274, a novel
cardiac myosin inhibitor that company scientists discovered
independent of its collaborations, for the potential treatment of
(hypertrophic cardiomyopathies (HCM). Cytokinetics is conducting
REDWOOD-HCM, a Phase 2 trial of CK-274 in patients with obstructive
HCM. Cytokinetics continues its over 20-year history of pioneering
innovation in muscle biology and related pharmacology focused to
diseases of muscle dysfunction and conditions of muscle
weakness.
For additional information
about Cytokinetics, visit www.cytokinetics.com and follow
us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking
statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform
Act of 1995 (the “Act”). Cytokinetics disclaims any
intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements and
claims the protection of the Act’s Safe Harbor for forward-looking
statements. Examples of such statements include, but are not
limited to, statements relating to Cytokinetics’ and its partners’
research and development activities of Cytokinetics’ product
candidates. Such statements are based on management’s current
expectations, but actual results may differ materially due to
various risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to the
risks related to Cytokinetics’ business outlines in Cytokinetics’
filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future
performance, and Cytokinetics’ actual results of operations,
financial condition and liquidity, and the development of the
industry in which it operates, may differ materially from the
forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Any
forward-looking statements that Cytokinetics makes in
this press release speak only as of the date of this press
release. Cytokinetics assumes no obligation to update its
forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information,
future events or otherwise, after the date of this press
release.
Contact:Diane WeiserVice
President, Corporate Communications, Investor Relations(415)
290-7757
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