NEW YORK - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn wants to engineer a sale of biotechnology company Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc to its diabetes partner Eli Lilly and Co , according to Amylin.

Icahn, who is in a proxy fight with Amylin, informed the company he intends to leverage your relationship with our partner Lilly to promptly attempt to sell Amylin to Lilly, Amylin director James Wilson said in a letter to Icahn.

The letter was released in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday.

Amylin's board and management believe that this is not the time to consider such an action, Wilson said, adding that a sale of the company now would dramatically undervalue the opportunity of its once-weekly experimental version of its Byetta diabetes drug.

Icahn turned up the heat in the proxy battle last week, calling for the resignation of Joseph Cook, the company's chairman and former chief executive.

Icahn previously seized biotechnology company ImClone Systems and ultimately sold it to Lilly for $6.5 billion.

(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf, editing by Maureen Bavdek)

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