Our goal is to become a fully-integrated biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing novel small molecule drugs that may address areas of significant unmet clinical needs. Our vision is to leverage our advanced drug discovery capabilities to exploit cytoskeletal pharmacology for the discovery, development and commercialization of drugs with clinically novel mechanisms of action. This vision translates into functional strategies that are focused towards minimizing business risk and maximizing our opportunities for success to create long-term benefits for patients. These strategies are defined by functional areas as follows:
Research: To manage technical and financial risk through strategically building redundancies and breadth in all key programs to increase the likelihood of success in each area of research. Details
At Cytokinetics, we intend to capitalize on the knowledge and expertise we have acquired in each of our muscle contractility research and development programs. In these programs, we are investigating potential treatments for diseases or medical conditions where impaired regulation of the contractile function of muscle plays a key role and such diseases or conditions may be amenable to treatment by modulation of muscle contractility, such as heart failure, and medical conditions associated with skeletal muscle weakness or wasting. We believe that our unique understanding of the cytoskeleton and our proprietary research technologies should enable us to discover and potentially to develop drug candidates with novel mechanisms of action that may offer potential benefits not provided by existing drugs and which may have application across a broad array of diseases and medical conditions. We expect that we may be able to leverage our expertise in muscle contractility to advance programs related to other areas of muscle function and which may extend to the potential treatment of other serious medical diseases and conditions. Progressing related programs in parallel may afford us an opportunity to build a broader business that could benefit from multiple products that serve related clinical and commercial needs associated with impaired muscle function, muscle weakness and fatigue. In addition, this strategy may enable us to diversify certain technical, financial and operating risks by advancing several drug candidates
Clinical Development: To move multiple candidates rapidly into human testing, to conduct rigorous and extensive clinical trials programs and to then execute on the most efficient registration strategy intended to maximize the probability of bringing drug candidates to market. Details
At Cytokinetics, we believe that by focusing on disease areas with well-organized physician-investigator groups, significant clinical unmet need, and strong patient and disease advocacy, we may enhance our effectiveness in enrolling and conducting clinical trials that may answer important questions about the dosing, tolerability, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics as well as the potential safety and efficacy of our drug candidates. We believe that our considered clinical trial designs and well-executed development programs can improve our ability to realize value from our clinical development activities. We believe that our investing in these activities may result in more successful later-stage clinical development activities that may increase the likelihood of our achieving our objectives to develop effective therapeutics that may address the needs of patients with grievous diseases and conditions.
Commercial Planning: To commercialize proprietary pharmaceuticals with focus on therapeutic areas where high clinical unmet needs in concentrated and tractable market segments still exist to improve the lives of patients and ensure a higher return on commercialization. Details
At Cytokinetics, we focus our drug discovery and development activities on disease areas for which there are serious unmet medical needs. In particular, we direct our activities to potential commercial opportunities in concentrated and tractable customer segments, such as hospital specialists and disease-specific centers of excellence, which may be addressed by a smaller, targeted sales force. In preparing for the potential commercialization of our drug candidates directed to these markets, we are focusing our activities on a broad range of issues facing patients and payors, including the principal drivers of clinical and economic burdens associated with these diseases. We also seek to focus on opportunities that the multiple constituencies and stakeholders for these markets may recognize as creating value. Accordingly, targeting unmet medical needs in these areas may provide us competitive opportunities and support development of a franchise in diseases involving muscle weakness, wasting and fatigue. In these markets, we believe that a company with limited resources may be able to compete effectively against larger, more established companies with greater financial and commercial resources. For these opportunities, we intend to develop clinical development and sales and marketing capabilities with the goal of becoming a fully-integrated biopharmaceutical company.
Partnerships: To selectively establish key alliances, retaining key measures of control, flexibility and economic participation, to increase the likelihood that our drug candidates will successfully reach patients in need. Details
At Cytokinetics, we believe that these types of alliances may allow us to obtain financial support and to capitalize on the therapeutic area expertise and resources of our partners that can potentially accelerate the development and commercialization of our drug candidates. Where we deem appropriate, we plan to retain certain rights to participate in the development of drug candidates and commercialization of potential drugs arising from our programs and alliances, so that we can expand and capitalize on our own internal development capabilities and build our commercialization capabilities.
Annual corporate planning begins with a strategic planning process that involves all components of the organization. Each year our goal is to critically evaluate our prior year’s ten-year corporate plan, including reassessing the extensive financial analyses and detailed portfolio timelines. Each year, we revisit and critically analyze key scenarios then confronting the organization. By developing and constantly revisiting these scenarios, our team can prospectively identify business risks and potential hurdles thereby allowing the company to more proactively identify actions to mitigate those risks. The end result is a blueprint aimed at ensuring that our organization has thoroughly vetted the strategy and that all risks are identified and then minimized, as best we can, to increase the likelihood of success for our drug candidates and Cytokinetics’ long-term sustainability and durability.
Our corporate strategy sessions are intended to drive our annual goals for the organization. We are aggressively building the future of Cytokinetics our agreed goals are then translated into specific program and functional objectives that are managed through our project management and other department teams composed of program-specific, cross-functional groups that meet regularly to track our success against our corporate goals.
