Daily Business Report-March 27, 2018
Professor Tony Hunter will receive the award on May 19 in Trento, Italy. (Credit: Salk Institute)
Salk Institute Professor Tony Hunter Receives
Prestigious International Award for Cancer Research
Professor Tony Hunter, who holds an American Cancer Society Professorship at the Salk Institute, has received the 2018 Pezcoller–AACR International Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research, one of the most prestigious honors in the field of cancer research. The prize recognizes a scientist of international renown who has made a major scientific discovery in basic cancer research or who has made significant contributions to translational cancer research.
The $75,000 prize will be awarded at a ceremony to be held at the Teatro Sociale in Trento, Italy, on May 19. The prize lecture will be given at the AACR Annual Meeting in Chicago on April 15.
Hunter is known for his 1979 discovery of a mechanism called tyrosine phosphorylation, which is a molecular switch that turns normal cells cancerous. The breakthrough led to a new type of cancer pharmaceutical, the tyrosine kinase inhibitor. This class of drugs has revolutionized the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia with the game-changing therapy Gleevec, and also is of great benefit in several other forms of cancer.
Hunter’s work has led to a complete catalogue of the 90 human genes that encode tyrosine kinases, over half of which have become targets for the development of drugs to treat cancer and other human diseases. Currently, 31 tyrosine kinase inhibitors are FDA approved for human therapy, with many more in clinical trials.
“We must continue to be relentless in our fight to end cancer, and harness the best scientific minds in the world to develop new breakthrough therapies to conquer one of the most devastating diseases facing humanity,” says Hunter. “I am honored to receive this award which I share with all the other researchers who are committed to this vital quest.”
Hunter, who holds the Renato Dulbecco Chair in Salk’s Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, also received the inaugural Sjöberg Prize in 2017 for cancer research. Additionally, he is the recipient of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, the Royal Medal in the Biological Sciences of the Royal Society, the Wolf Prize in Medicine and the Gairdner International Award, among other prestigious honors. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Born in 1943 in Ashford, Kent, in the United Kingdom, Hunter is also a fellow of the Royal Society of London.
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Flexible Ultrasound Patch Could Make it Easier
to Inspect Damage in Odd-Shaped Structures
Researchers have developed a stretchable, flexible patch that could make it easier to perform ultrasound imaging on odd-shaped structures, such as engine parts, turbines, reactor pipe elbows and railroad tracks — objects that are difficult to examine using conventional ultrasound equipment.
The ultrasound patch is a versatile and more convenient tool to inspect machine and building parts for defects and damage deep below the surface. A team of researchers led by engineers at the University of California San Diego published the study in the March 23 issue of Science Advances.
The new device overcomes a limitation of today’s ultrasound devices, which are difficult to use on objects that don’t have perfectly flat surfaces. Conventional ultrasound probes have flat and rigid bases, which can’t maintain good contact when scanning across curved, wavy, angled and other irregular surfaces. That’s a considerable limitation, said Sheng Xu, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and the study’s corresponding author. “Nonplanar surfaces are prevalent in everyday life,” he said.
The new device overcomes a limitation of today’s ultrasound devices, which are difficult to use on objects that don’t have perfectly flat surfaces. Conventional ultrasound probes have flat and rigid bases, which can’t maintain good contact when scanning across curved, wavy, angled and other irregular surfaces. That’s a considerable limitation, said Sheng Xu, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and the study’s corresponding author. “Nonplanar surfaces are prevalent in everyday life,” he said.
“Elbows, corners and other structural details happen to be the most critical areas in terms of failure—they are high stress areas,” said Francesco Lanza di Scalea, a professor of structural engineering at UC San Diego and co-author of the study. “Conventional rigid, flat probes aren’t ideal for imaging internal imperfections inside these areas.”
Gel, oil or water is typically used to create better contact between the probe and the surface of the object it’s examining. But too much of these substances can filter some of the signals. Conventional ultrasound probes are also bulky, making them impractical for inspecting hard-to-access parts.
“If a car engine has a crack in a hard-to-reach location, an inspector will need to take apart the entire engine and immerse the parts in water to get a full 3D image,” Xu said.
Now, a UC San Diego-led team has developed a soft ultrasound probe that can work on odd-shaped surfaces without water, gel or oil.
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Foundation Hosts Free Leadership Workshop
for High School Seniors and College Students
The San Diego North Educational Foundation will host a complimentary leadership certification workshop titled “Strategies for Success” for high school seniors (18+), college, and vocational students, on April 12.
The all-day workshop will address numerous leadership skills as well as an array of business and leadership topics designed to give student participants a competitive professional edge over their peers. The workshop is exclusively available to students and limited to 20 seats on a first come, first serve basis.
Strategies for Success workshop topics will include: Leadership; Public Speaking; Time Management; Networking/Technology;
Entrepreneurship; Personal Finance; Community Service/Volunteerism.
Each workshop session will be taught by experienced chamber member professionals recognized as emerging leaders and experts in their respective industries.
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San Diego Makes List of Best Cities
for Entrepreneurs and Startups
San Diego is one of six California cities making a list of the Best Cities for Entrepreneurs and Startups in 2018 announced by Business.org. The other five cities are San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Riverside.
To compile the report, Business.org said its analysts studied over 300 North American cities and ranked each according to their start-up friendliness, as well as financial environments and demographic cultures. From there, data were compared for the 40 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, and included data from the Kauffman Index’s 2017 Growth Entrepreneurship report.
Click here for the full report.
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Online Grocery Sales Growth Expected to
Hike Demand for Cold Storage Warehouse Space
The growth of online grocery sales could result in demand for up to 35 million square feet of U.S. cold-storage space shifting from retail stores to warehouses and distribution centers within the next seven years, according to a new report from CBRE.
“The U.S. market for warehouses and distribution centers has been on a multiyear run, but there still are segments in the relatively early stages of their growth, like cold storage,” said David Egan, CBRE global head of industrial and logistics research. “As e-commerce expands further into the grocery business, the resulting growth of the food supply chain and demand for new, climate-controlled warehouse space could very well be the new opportunity that investors and developers have been seeking.”
CBRE estimates that the U.S. market for food-commodity cold storage space spans roughly 180 million square feet of industrial space – namely refrigerated warehouses – and about 300 million square feet of space in grocery stores and other retail venues.
That ratio between industrial and retail cold-storage space will shift in the coming years as online grocery sales will grow from 3 percent of all grocery sales in 2017 to 13 percent by 2024. Based on that projection, CBRE calculates that demand for as much as 35 million square feet of cold-storage space will shift from retail properties to industrial.
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Bee International Signs Lease for New
Headquarters in Sunroad Corporate Center
Bee International has secured a 10-year lease for an 80,898-square-foot space in the Sunroad Corporate Center at 2020 Piper Ranch Road in San Diego for its corporate headquarters. The lease is valued at nearly $7 million.
“The new facility will allow Bee to expand their operations and create a new state of the art long-term home for the company,” said Jeff Saywitz of Voit Real Estate Services, who represented Bee International.
The building is owned by Morgan Stanley, based in San Francisco, and was represented by Bill Dolan and Rob Hixon of CBRE.
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Community College District and San Diego
Unified Boards to Hold Joint Meeting April 17
Expanded opportunities for high school students to enroll in community college courses and making college free through the San Diego Promise will be among the topics discussed when the governing boards of the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) and the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) hold a joint board meeting on April 17. The meeting, which is open to the general public, is the seventh since the two boards first held a joint session in 2011.
The session is scheduled for 5 p.m. in the auditorium at Clairemont High School, 4150 Ute Drive, 92117.
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Murphy Development Sells Building 16 at
Siempre Viva Business Park for $26.5 Million
Murphy Development Company has sold the 165,763-square-foot Siempre Viva Business Park Building 16 at 8411 Siempre Viva Road to Ajinomoto Windsor for $26.5 million, the highest price per square foot to date for any Otay Mesa industrial building. MDC originally completed Building 16 as a build-to-suit for Circle Foods, a subsidiary of Stephan Bronfman’s Claridge Inc.
Tyson Foods acquired Circle Foods in 2013, assuming the long-term lease with MDC. Ajinomoto Windsor simultaneously acquired both Circle Foods from Tyson and Building 16 from MDC. Tyson, which has had up to 1,000 employees, is scheduled to cease operations in April. After food processing renovations and new equipment has been installed, Ajinomoto Windsor will expand food-processing operations in the facility.
“MDC welcomes Ajinomoto Windsor to SVBP’s Fortune 500 row, to join Iron Mountain, General Dynamics, FedEx and the other strong and growing tenants,” said Kaitlin Arduino, MDC’s executive vice president.
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