After the shutdown of its Geneva headquarters (Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 569, 2012), Merck Serono has found homes for some of its programs in the form of spinouts. Merck Serono, a division of Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, recently announced two new Geneva-based startups. Both will tap into a €30 million ($37.5 million) seed fund, the Entrepreneur Partnership Program, created by the German pharma in April 2012 to support spinoff and startup companies that continue R&D activities originally started at Merck Serono. One is Prextron Therapeutics, set up to continue work on two metabotropic glutamate receptor programs for Parkinson's disease. The other is Quartz Bio, a services organization that offers biomarker data management and exploratory biomarker analysis. “It's good corporate citizenship for them to do something for their employees and for the region,” said Chandra Leo, a partner at HBM Partners of Zurich. As part of the spinoff process, employee teams propose a business plan to develop the assets. When seed money runs out, spinouts will acquire funding through the usual venture capital channels, potentially including Merck Serono Ventures. François Conquet, founder and CEO of Prexton, said his new company “is working to form a new syndicate of [venture capitalists] for the next funding round.” Starting with a developed asset and an experienced team should increase the startups' likelihood of success. “By and large, pharma spinoffs tend to be more successful,” Leo said, pointing at Roche spinoff Actelion, of Allschwil, Switzerland, as a prime example.