Protein Kinase (casein kinase 2, CK2) is a serine-threonine kinase that is frequently dysregulated in many human tumors. Therefore we hypothesized that peptides capable of binding to the CK2 acidic domain may exhibit potential anticancer properties. By screening a random cyclic peptide phage display library, we have identified a novel peptide, P15, that abrogated CK2 phosphorylation by blocking the substrate in vitro. To verify its potential antineoplastic effect, P15 was fused to the cell-penetrating peptide derived from the HIV-Tat protein. Interestingly, P15-Tat induced apoptosis as evidenced by rapid caspase activation and cellular cytotoxicity in a variety of tumor cell lines. Furthermore, direct injection of P15-Tat into C57BL6 mice bearing day 7-established solid tumors, resulted in substantial regression of the tumor mass. Our findings describe a new proapoptotic cyclic peptide that blocks the CK2 phosphorylation and exhibits antitumor effect in vivo, indicating that the P15 peptide may potentially be used clinically to treat solid tumors or as an adjuvant for cancer therapy.

Between 2000 and 2012, the Santa Isabel area of the Santiago-Centro comuna (municipal district) saw increasing capital concentration in middle-income-oriented, new-build real estate. Whilst large developers devised several ways to pay low land prices to original owner-residents, the average sale price of new apartments rose, reducing the amount of housing options in the area by at least 50% for original low-income residents—a form of exclusionary displacement. In parallel, state regulations intensified the Floor Area Ratio in order to anchor real-estate investment to their territories, substantively leading to development projects with much higher density rates, higher rents, and smaller living spaces. In this article, I draw upon an analysis of 262 land plots that were redeveloped into 65 new high-rise projects and a survey of 195 original households who lived in the still non-redeveloped properties inside the case study area, in order to analyze how Santiago’s high-rise urban renewal (usually) means new-build gentrification led by the state and monopolized by large-scale developers.

Currently, Latin American cities are seeing simultaneous processes of reinvestment and redevelopment in their historic central areas. These are not just mega-scale interventions like Porto Maravilha in Rio or Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires or the luxury renovations seen in Santa Fé or Nueva Polanco in Mexico City, they also include state-led, piecemeal, high-rise interventions in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Panamá and Bogotá, all of which are causing the displacement of original populations and thus are forms of gentrification. Until very recently, these processes have been under-conceptualized and little critiqued in Latin America, but they deserve careful scrutiny, along with new forms of neighbourhood organization, activism and resistance. In this introduction, we begin that task, drawing on the work begun in an Urban Studies Foundation-funded workshop on Global Gentrification held in Santiago, Chile in 2012. Our aim is not just to understand these urban changes and conflicts as gentrification, but to empirically test the applicability of a generic understanding of gentrification beyond the usual narratives of/from the global North. From this investigation, we hope to nurture new critical narratives, to engage sensitively with indigenous theoretical narratives and to understand the dialectical interplay between state policies, financial markets, local politics and people. The papers in this special issue deal with the core issues of state power and urban policies (exerted at metropolitan and neighbourhood scales), the enormous influx of financial investment in derelict neighbourhoods that produces exclusion and segregation, the significant loss of urban heritage from rapidly “renewing” neighbourhoods and the institutional arrangements that can enable anti-displacement activism and self-managed social housing production.

Fundamentales para la producción neoliberal del espacio urbano son los ajustes técnico-urbanísticos orientados a la atracción de capital requerido para producir renovación urbana a gran escala, factor preponderante pero poco estudiado en Latinoamérica. Tales operaciones municipales son propias de lo que se conoce como urbanismo pro-empresarial (urban state-entrepreneurialism) o la regulación ad hoc del uso e intensidad de la explotación del suelo, con generación de alianzas público-privadas, inyección de lógicas de rentabilidad al interior del discurso y práctica municipal, y accionar especulativo del estado a nivel local. Focalizado en seis comunasdel “inner city” de Santiago de Chile, el estudio de caso aquí presentado (periodo 2000-2011) observa las modificaciones a los instrumentos de regulación y su resultante en producción y localización inmobiliaria, a través de revisión documental, entrevistas a agentes clave y análisis de registro público de propiedades. Se concluye que si bien la alianza público privada no es condición necesaria para la renovación intensiva del suelo, sí lo es un estado general de competencia intercomunal, la capacidad de los gobiernos locales pericentrales de relocalizar áreas de renovación urbana vía modificaciones normativas, y la generación deliberada de movilidad intra y extracomunal de capital inmobiliario.Technical-urban adjustments oriented towards raising the capital required for a large scale urban renewal are essential for the neo-liberal production of urban space; this is a key factor that has not been properly studied in Latin America. Such municipal actions stem from the so-called urban stateentrepreneurialism or the ad hoc regulation regarding the use and intensity of land exploitation, which involves the generation of public-private partnerships, incorporation of profitability logics within municipal practices and state speculative action at local level. Focusing on six municipalities located in the inner city of Santiago de Chile, and through literature review, interviews to key agents and the revision of the public register of properties, this case study (2000-2011) examines the changes undergone by regulation instruments and the consequences for real estate production and the location of residential developments. The analysis concludes that, although private public partnerships are not an essential condition for intensive urban renewal, elements such as inter-communal competition, the capacity of inner local governments to relocate areas for urban renewal through legal modifications and the deliberate generation of intra and extra-communal mobilization of real estate capital are prerequisites for the intensive renewal of land

En Latinoamérica y Chile, en la última década, se observan intensos procesos de reestructuración urbana en zonas pericentrales, con recambio de clase social, lo que es comprendido bajo el apelativo de “gentrificación”. El presente artículo ofrece una lectura crítica de aspectos teóricos esenciales del fenómeno de la gentrificación, enfatizando una distinción de lo que resulta regular (sustancial) versus lo anecdótico o visualmente contingente del proceso. Tal definición se estima útil para entablar un diálogo conceptual más fructífero y articulador con definiciones provenientes desde otras latitudes. En una segunda instancia, el artículo intenta corroborar una hipótesis explicativa del carácter estructuralmente político-económico del actual proceso de gentrificación en las principales ciudades chilenas, abordando el caso de Santiago como el más representativo. Se presenta evidencia y analiza incrementos de renta potencial monopólicamente capturada por inmobiliarias (RCS-2), a la par de procesos deliberados de devaluación de renta de suelo socialmente capturada (RCS-1), con consecuente desplazamiento social residencial.For the last decade, Latin America and Chile have seen intensive class-led processes of urban restructuring, namely gentrification. This article offers a critical revision of gentrifi cation theory whilst emphasizing what is regular versus what is contingent (or particular) of the process, in order to better engage the local debate with the global academia. In a second part, the article substantiates a hypothesis about the politico-economic character of the processes of gentrifi cation experienced by the major Chilean cities, focusing on the case of the inner city of Santiago as the most representative. We analyze evidence on potential increases in ground rent levels and the monopoly captured by real estate fi rms, as well as subsequently deliberate processes of capitalized ground rent devaluation and thus social displacement of low-income residents.FONDECYT 11100337 “Rent gap, social agents and planning systems: A case-study analysis of the property-led gentrifi cation of Santiago de Chile's inner city area”