Daily Business Report-Sept. 7, 2018
Borderpoint Business Park is one of the acquisitions of BKM Capital Partners.
BKM Capital Partners acquires
14 industrial properties in Otay Mesa
BKM Capital Partners has acquired 14 industrial properties across six projects in Otay Mesa from Stockbridge Capital Group. The acquisition was announced by Cushman & Wakefield, which brokered the deal.
The properties involved in the sale: Borderpoint Business Park (171,516 square feet), Otay Distribution Center (102,875 square feet), San Diego International Center (111,644 square feet), Frontera Business Park (97,961 square feet), and Otay Crossing Business Park (66,184 square feet).
Encompassing over 56 acres within Otay Mesa, the portfolio is located in proximity to the the U.S.- Mexico border ports of entry, and several airports.
The properties, developed between 1984 and 2001, feature concrete tilt-up construction with varied bay sizes that accommodate a wide range of configurations, as well as above-standard loading capabilities with grade- and dock-high doors, up to 26-foot clear heights, sprinkler systems, and concrete truck courts.
The portfolio was 98 percent leased at the time of the sale to 44 tenants ranging from maquiladoras to regional and national tenants, including Avery Products Corporation, Suarez Brokerage, and Trident Maritime Systems.
__________________
Elite SEM acquires Amazon specialist
agency CPC Strategy of San Diego
Digital marketing agency Elite SEM has acquired CPC Strategy, the San Diego-based agency known for its work in retail, ecommerce, and specifically the Amazon channel, where it expects to derive more than half of its revenue in 2018.
The combination with CPC Strategy adds critical scale to Elite’s rapidly growing Amazon practice, bolsters the depth of its expertise in search and social, and also delivers a powerful technology asset in CPC Strategy’s proprietary CAPx media and bid optimization platform, according to Elite SEM.
CPC Strategy, with a team of over 125 employees, works with both brands and sellers and provides services including strategy and advisory, media planning and placement, creative and content services, and data and analytics. Clients include Pfizer, Reef, Guthy Renker, The Honest Company, Hallmark, Nestle, Comvita, Riddell, Unilever’s Seventh Generation, and Nutrisystem, as well as many Amazon-only sellers.
The combined company will have approximately 500 performance media specialists, integrated media strategists, and data scientists.
The acquisition includes CPC Strategy’s proprietary Amazon media and bid optimization platform, CAPx.
__________________
Blind, visually impaired get help
shopping at Wegmans with new app
Wegmans Food Markets is the first grocery chain in the country to partner with Aira, a mobile app that offers next generation shopping assistance to customers who are blind or have low vision. Aira is powered by AT&T and based in San Diego. Read more…
__________________
Scientists test new cancer
vaccine against melanoma
An experimental cancer vaccine that boosts the immune system’s ability to fight cancers could work in tandem with other cancer therapies to fight aggressive tumors, scientists reported recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers demonstrated that adding a molecule called Diprovocim to a vaccine can draw cancer-fighting cells to tumor sites. Their experiments in mice with melanoma suggest these vaccines could increase chances of recovery in cases where a drug therapy alone is not working.
“This co-therapy produced a complete response—a curative response—in the treatment of melanoma,” says Scripps Research Professor Dale Boger, who co-led the study with Nobel laureate Bruce Beutler of UT Southwestern.
The vaccine also prompts the immune system to fight tumor cells should they ever return, a capability that could prevent cancer recurrence. “Just as a vaccine can train the body to fight off external pathogens, this vaccine trains the immune system to go after the tumor,” Boger explains.
__________________
Mesa College president to lead
regional community college association
San Diego Mesa College President Pamela Luster is the new chair of the San Diego & Imperial Counties Community Colleges Association (SDICCCA), a collaboration between six community college districts in a two-county area. The association serves more than 230,000 students each year at its nine community colleges and San Diego Continuing Education. The organization works closely with San Diego State University, UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, and other four-year universities to develop and maintain effective programs that ensure student success, serve the community, and train workers.
Luster, who joined Mesa College in 2011, is assuming leadership of the association at a historic moment for California community colleges as the state expands its support of free tuition programs and experiments with a new “Student Centered Funding Formula.”
For the region, the stakes are high. Nine out of 10 of SDICCCA graduates transfer to a university or are in the local labor force. Along with these alumni, SDICCCA institutions contribute more than $8.1 billion dollars annually to California’s economy.
__________________
A master switch controls
aggressive breast cancer
A team at the Salk Institute has identified a master switch that appears to control the dynamic behavior of tumor cells that makes some aggressive cancers so difficult to treat. The gene Sox10 directly controls the growth and invasion of a significant fraction of hard-to-treat triple-negative breast cancers.
Recently, the Salk lab led by Professor Geoffrey Wahl discovered that aggressive breast cancers return to a flexible, earlier state found in fetal breast tissue. This cellular reprogramming may be the key to cancer’s ability to form new cell types, evolve drug resistance and metastasize to other locations in the body. The new work documenting Sox10’s role in this process, which was reported in the journal Cancer Cell on Aug. 30, 2018, represents a major milestone in researchers’ understanding of cancer and could open new avenues for diagnosing and treating aggressive breast cancer as well as other types of intractable cancers.
