Daily Business Report-Dec. 22, 2020
Harper VanSteenhouse, president of BioClavis, scans a saliva collection tube. BioClavis is using the BioSpyder technology for COVID-19 testing in the U.K.
Carlsbad company to sell COVID-19 surveillance
screening kits to businesses and consumers
Carlsbad-based BioSpyder Technologies Inc. announced that it is selling COVID-19 surveillance screening kits to businesses and consumers via its new ecommerce site testtheteam.com (live on Tuesday). The service, which utilizes the BioSpyder TempO-SPan technology, aims to relieve the pressure on America’s COVID-19 testing infrastructure by offering an option that will screen four people at a time for $39.99 (plus shipping and handling).
The kit comprises of four saliva collection tubes that contain mouthwash. The consumer will send it back to BioSpyder for testing. Once BioSpyder receives the samples, customers will be notified within 24-48 hours whether COVID-19 virus was detected for the team as a group. Individual results will not be provided. This allows an organization or household to screen a group of people at one time safely, accurately, and more affordably giving everyone peace of mind, the company said.
“If America is to get back to work, we need to do all that we can to encourage widespread, regular affordable screening,” said BioSpyder CEO Joel McComb, “TestTheTeam is an effective solution for groups of people to have more confidence in their interactions, whether your team is family, co-workers, or a social group.”
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Scripps Research names Jin-Quan Yu to newly endowed
Bristol Myers Squibb Chair in Chemistry
Scripps Research has named Professor Jin-Quan Yu, a pioneering chemist whose research has paved the way to powerful new techniques used in fields ranging from drug discovery to materials science, to be the inaugural holder of the Bristol Myers Squibb Endowed Chair in Chemistry.
Yu received his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 1999. He subsequently held positions as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and as a junior faculty member at Cambridge and Brandeis University. He joined the faculty at Scripps Research in 2007, where he is the Frank and Bertha Hupp Professor of Chemistry.
In 2016, he was named a MacArthur Fellow for pioneering new methods in chemistry and enabling the development of versatile, novel and beneficial chemical compounds. His work was cited by the MacArthur Foundation as “breaking down barriers to the development of versatile compounds with enormous benefits to academic, industrial, and pharmaceutical research.”
Yu’s research team has published more than 200 papers in influential research journals and has forged collaborations with academic and industry leaders around the world. This includes a collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb researchers to develop a valuable new technique, known as “ligand-accelerated non-directed C–H functionalization,” that has already found application in pharmaceutical chemistry and a wide range of other chemical industries.
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Bank of Southern California announces plans
to open five branches throughout Southern California
Bank of Southern California N.A., a community business bank headquartered in San Diego, announced plans to expand throughout Southern California with the addition of five full-service branches by the end of first quarter 2021. The company said the new offices will be strategically located within Los Angeles County and San Diego County to better serve the banking needs of individuals, professionals, and small-to-medium sized businesses within the region.
The bank will begin its expansion plans with the unveiling of temporary office locations in the majority of these markets early next year. The company anticipates opening permanent locations in late first quarter 2021. The bank’s newest markets will include Encino, Santa Clarita, Westlake, West Los Angeles, and La Jolla.
To support the company’s expansion efforts, plans are underway to recruit senior in-market commercial bankers. Highly experienced relationship managers, portfolio managers, and business banking sales support officers, that both work and live in their respective Southern California communities, will be selected to lead and grow these new branch locations.
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Computational model reveals how the brain
manages short-term memories
If you’ve ever forgotten something mere seconds after it was at the forefront of your mind—the name of a dish you were about to order at a restaurant, for instance—then you know how important working memory is. This type of short-term recall is how people retain information for a matter of seconds or minutes to solve a problem or carry out a task, like the next step in a series of instructions.
But, although it’s critical in our day-to-day lives, exactly how the brain manages working memory has been a mystery.
Now, Salk scientists have developed a new computational model showing how the brain maintains information short-term using specific types of neurons. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience on December 7, 2020, could help shed light on why working memory is impaired in a broad range of neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, as well as in normal aging.
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Top San Diego tourism advertising firm
acquired by Ohio-based marketing agency
TSY Enterprises, parent company of The Shipyard, a Columbus, Ohio-based marketing agency, has acquired San Diego’s Mering advertising agency for an undisclosed sum. Dave Mering, 64, former CEO, founded the company in 1985. A spokesperson said no layoffs at the 60-employee Mering are anticipated as a result of the acquisition. The Mering name will remain at this time.
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Biocom California publishes new
Return to Work Guide for 2021
Biocom California, the association representing the California life science industry, announced that it has published a guide tailored to life science companies with recommendations on how to safely return to the workplace as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve. “The Path Forward: Biocom California’s Return to Work Guide for the Life Science Industry,” follows up Biocom California’s first guide, released in May, with all-new content updated to include vaccination information, testing best practices, and updated CDC guidelines throughout. The guide is designed to assist small and medium-sized life science companies by providing industry best practices for preparing their facilities to meet workplace, laboratory, and manufacturing safety guidelines.
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International Land Alliance announces
site preparation for commercial hemp operation
International Land Alliance Inc., a land investment and development firm based in San Diego, announced that its joint venture partner has completed site preparation and will officially break ground to develop a commercial hemp operation on 40 acres of the company’s Southern California property.
The company announced the signing of the joint venture on Oct. 12, 2020. The first phase of the development includes plans for 1,350 square feet of indoor operations slated for growing, germination, processing and storage and three acres of outdoor. Indoor grows can have nearly perpetual harvests if the growing conditions are right and a good cultivation team is in place. Outdoor plants are usually larger and contain more buds in many cases, but with multiple harvests, the yield for indoor plants can be much larger depending on the number of plants, as well as the other factors that can impact output.
The ompany acquired this property in Q1 2019 for $1.1 million, which included three vacant 20-acre parcels, and one 20-acre parcel with an existing 8,000 square foot event venue currently generating revenue.
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Former FBI supervisory special agent
John Caruthers joins EVOTEC’s cybersecurity team
Cybersecurity firm EVOTEK, a San Diego-based company has hired former FBI Supervisory Special Agent John Caruthers as business information security officer and executive adviser.
Caruthers’s hire exhibits EVOTEK’s longtime commitment to further expand and strengthen their cybersecurity capabilities, protecting U.S. businesses from cyberthreats of all kinds.
In a decorated career spanning 27 years, Caruthers investigated all types of criminal activity and corruption.
His last role was as supervisory special agent of the FBI’s San Diego Cyber National Security Squad where he led both national defense and the criminal cyber squads in defending U.S. companies and interests abroad.
Caruthers provided regular intelligence and board-level briefs to commercial organizations to better educate and inform their leaders.
Upon his retirement from the FBI, he continues to raise cybersecurity awareness and educate on the threats cyber-attacks pose to domestic and international businesses.
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UC San Diego receives 7 DURIP Awards
from Department of Defense
By Michelle Franklin and Robert Monroe | UC San Diego
Scientists at the University of California San Diego received seven Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) awards from the Department of Defense (DOD).
The awards totaling more than $3 million support projects ranging from measuring energy expenditure in the brain and studying quantum materials to understanding the neurobiology of the fruit fly and measuring the physics of what happens where the atmosphere meets the ocean surface. The seven awards were the largest number received by a University of California campus. UCLA and UC Berkeley received four each.
The DURIP awards program is jointly administered by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office and Office of Naval Research. The Department seeks specific proposals from university investigators conducting foundational science and engineering research relevant to national defense, while also ensuring that the United States retains its technological edge and that the nation’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce remains strong.
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Axos Bank named Best Online Bank
for third straight year
Axos Bank been named America’s Best Online Bank for the third year in a row, according to the independent financial comparison site MyBankTracker.com.
The site named Axos Bank Rewards Checking one of the best checking accounts of 2021 — also the third year in a row in which the product made the list.
“Axos Bank Rewards Checking deserves an award for its extremely high checking rate on all deposit balances when a few simple requirements are met,” MyBankTracker said. “Additionally, its overall fee policy includes unlimited ATM fee refunds and no overdraft fees (plus, no monthly fees).”
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Latinos at higher risk for
hearing loss and diabetes
Hearing loss and diabetes are major public health problems, with Latinos at higher risk than other demographic groups. In a new study published Dec. 17, 2020 in the online issue of JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery , researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine with colleagues elsewhere, report that hearing loss and high blood sugar are associated with poor cognitive performance among middle-aged and older Latinos.
Diabetes is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias. More recently, hearing loss has also been linked to increased risk for AD. However, few studies have investigated the combined relationships between cardiovascular disease risk, hearing loss and cognition.
