PTC Therapeutics’ 2022 STRIVE Awards Program Funds Initiatives Supporting the Duchenne Patient Community

PTC Therapeutics’ 2022 STRIVE Awards Program Funds Initiatives Supporting the Duchenne Patient Community

- 2022 recipients include patient advocacy organizations from Brazil, Greece, Turkey, and the U.K. -

SOUTH PLAINFIELD, N.J., Sept. 7, 2022 – PTC Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: PTCT) today announced the four recipients of its 2022 STRIVE Awards for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The STRIVE program provides grants to non-profit patient advocacy organizations serving the Duchenne community. This year, grants will fund projects focused on formal learning, psychological support, sexuality, and skills-based training for people with Duchenne.  

“We are proud to support the 2022 grant recipients for their work in the Duchenne community through our STRIVE Awards program. They have shown the broad range of needs in the Duchenne community, including programs supporting adults living with Duchenne,” said Mary Frances Harmon, senior vice president, Corporate Relations, PTC Therapeutics. “The positive impact of the STRIVE grants will be across four countries this year, and we are privileged to provide the organizations with support to make their innovative projects a reality.”

The categories for the 2022 STRIVE Awards are ‘Innovative’ for programs that help to address the unmet needs of the rare disease community, and ‘Transition to Adulthood’ for programs that support young people with Duchenne as they transition into independent adults. ‘Transition to Adulthood’ is a category introduced last year to celebrate the initiatives that support those living with Duchenne to lead independent, fulfilling, and rewarding lives. This year, PTC received 40 applications from organizations around the world.

The 2022 STRIVE Awards recipients are:

Innovative Category:

• Brazil -The State of Ceará Muscular Dystrophy Association (ACDM) will launch “Project Facilitate,” a program focused on rehabilitating students with Duchenne into formal education and giving them the opportunity to achieve the educational objectives for their academic level. The project offers students greater autonomy to develop academically and socially.

• Turkey - Neuromuscular Disorders Association of Turkey (KASDER) first received the STRIVE Award in 2018 to setup their online psychological support system for Turkish-speaking people with Duchenne around the world. As second-time recipients of the grant, their 2022 project will focus on an expansion of their online services to more people in the Duchenne community by providing more sessions and training additional psychologists.

Transition to Adulthood Category:

• Greece - Muscular Dystrophy Association of Greece (MDA Hellas) will produce and premiere a short film focused on the sexuality of people living with Duchenne. The project will feature first-hand accounts from those living with Duchenne and the film will be accessible to the global Duchenne community. The film will offer realistic, unique, and much-needed insight into a topic which has long been viewed as taboo to discuss.

• U.K. - Action Duchenne will build on their skills-based training courses to support young people living with Duchenne as they transition into adulthood. The course topics range from running a business to achieving self-empowerment. The project will combine residential and online professional-led training to provide social interaction, skills training, and peer-to-peer support, all with the aim to increase independence, employability, and social cohesion.

“It has been such a wonderful experience to be part of the judging panel for the STRIVE Awards. The innovation and determination to meet the needs of the Duchenne community shown by all the organizations who applied made our decision process tough,” said Antoine Daher, founder, Casa Hunter. “The projects we’ve chosen this year will make an unprecedented difference for the community, and at the same time, serve as an inspiration to other organizations around the world.”

About the STRIVE Awards Program

PTC launched the Strategies to Realize Innovation, Vision, and Empowerment (STRIVE) Awards program in 2015 to support initiatives that benefit the Duchenne community by increasing awareness, diagnosis, and education, and fostering the development of future patient advocates. Each year, an independent panel of external experts with knowledge in rare diseases, patient advocacy and funding initiatives, judge the entries for innovation, vision, and empowerment. Thirty-nine projects supporting the Duchenne community have received STRIVE grants since the program’s inception. 

For further information about the program and the 2022 award recipients, please visit the STRIVE Awards page on PTC’s website at: www.ptcstriveawards.com. 

About Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy 

Primarily affecting males, Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a rare and fatal genetic disorder that results in progressive muscle weakness from early childhood and leads to premature death in the mid-twenties due to heart and respiratory failure. It is a progressive muscle disorder caused by the lack of functional dystrophin protein. Dystrophin is critical to the structural stability of all muscles, including skeletal, diaphragm, and heart muscles. Patients with Duchenne can lose the ability to walk (loss of ambulation) as early as age ten, followed by loss of the use of their arms. Duchenne patients subsequently experience life-threatening lung complications, requiring the need for ventilation support, and heart complications in their late teens and twenties.