In April, Bristol-Myers Squibb announced plans to close down Amylin's San Diego headquarters at the end of next year. The New York pharma has already laid off at least 400 employees since purchasing the diabetes specialist last year. Amylin was founded in 1987 and has successfully brought three diabetes medications to market, including Symlin (pramlintide), Byetta (exenatide) and Bydureon (exenatide extended-release). “It's an age-old story here,” says Joe Panetta, president and CEO of Biocom, the region's life sciences association, citing Eli Lilly's closing Hybritech and, more recently, Biogen Idec's closing the old Idec Pharmaceutical campus. But Panetta sees the closings as a potential positive. “When you're strong in new-company creation and early-stage company growth, it's always an advantage to be able to move people from a company that's had the experience of becoming commercial into roles where they can help these early-stage companies to grow and hopefully move up the ladder themselves into commercialization, partnership or acquisition,” Panetta says. Also in April, Avalon Ventures, of San Diego, and the London-based GlaxoSmithKline teamed up to start as many as ten new life sciences companies in San Diego. Avalon, which is committing $30 million to the venture, will be responsible for finding the early-stage technology to build the companies upon and managing the startups, whereas GSK has committed up to $465 million to the startups and will provide expertise in drug development. GSK, which doesn't currently have a presence in San Diego, will have the option to purchase any of the startups that succeed. “It really speaks to what we [San Diego biotech community] do well,” Panetta says. In May, Merck paid $430 million including milestones to San Diego–based Abide Therapeutics, a startup based on work done by Scripps investigators, in a discovery deal focused on diabetes and metabolic diseases.