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Reprogramming of cancer cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is a compelling idea for inhibiting oncogenesis, especially through modulation of homeobox proteins in this reprogramming process. We examined the role of various long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs)-homeobox protein HOXA13 axis on the switching of the oncogenic function of bone morphogenetic protein 7 (BMP7), which is significantly lost in the gastric cancer cell derived iPS-like cells (iPSLCs). BMP7 promoter activation occurred through the corecruitment of HOXA13, mixed-lineage leukemia 1 lysine N-methyltransferase, WD repeat-containing protein 5, and lncRNA HoxA transcript at the distal tip (HOTTIP) to commit the epigenetic changes to the trimethylation of lysine 4 on histone H3 in cancer cells. By contrast, HOXA13 inhibited BMP7 expression in iPSLCs via the corecruitment of HOXA13, enhancer of zeste homolog 2, Jumonji and AT rich interactive domain 2, and lncRNA HoxA transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR) to various cis-element of the BMP7 promoter. Knockdown experiments demonstrated that HOTTIP contributed positively, but HOTAIR regulated negatively to HOXA13-mediated BMP7 expression in cancer cells and iPSLCs, respectively. These findings indicate that the recruitment of HOXA13-HOTTIP and HOXA13-HOTAIR to different sites in the BMP7 promoter is crucial for the oncogenic fate of human gastric cells. Reprogramming with octamer-binding protein 4 and Jun dimerization protein 2 can inhibit tumorigenesis by switching off BMP7. S tem C ells 2017;35:2115-2128 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bstract The network of stemness genes and oncogenes in human patient-specific reprogrammed cancer stem cells (CSCs) remains elusive, especially in liver cancer. HepG2-derived induced pluripotent stem cell-like cells (HepG2-iPS-like cells) were generated by introducing Yamanaka factors and the knockdown vector shTP53. They exhibited features of stemness and a higher tumorigenesis after xenograft transplantation compared with HepG2 cells. The cancerous mass of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice derived from one colony was dissected and cultured to establish reprogrammed HepG2-derived CSC-like cells (designated rG2-DC-1C). A single colony exhibited 42% occurrence of tumors with higher proliferation capacities. rG2-DC-1C showed continuous expression of the OCT4 stemness gene and of representative tumor markers, potentiated chemoresistance characteristics, and invasion activities. The sphere-colony formation ability and the invasion activity of rG2-DC-1C were also higher than those of HepG2 cells. Moreover, the expression of the OCT4 gene and the c-JUN oncogene, but not of c-MYC, was significantly elevated in rG2-DC-1C, whereas no c-JUN expression was observed in HepG2 cells. The positive-feedback regulation via OCT4-mediated transactivation of the c-JUN promoter and the c-JUN-mediated transactivation of the OCT4 promoter were crucial for promoting cancer development and maintaining cancer stemness in rG2-DC-1C. Increased expression of OCT4 and c-JUN was detected in the early stage of human liver cancer. Therefore, the positive feedback regulation of OCT4 and c-JUN, resulting in the continuous expression of oncogenes such as c-JUN, seems to play a critical role in the determination of the cell fate decision from iPS cells to CSCs in liver cancer. S tem C ells 2016;34:2613-2624 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Taiwan Electronic Medical Record Template (TMT) developed by the Taiwan Association for Medical Informatics research group. The TMT serves as basic structure of reference for setting up electronic medical records (EMRs) in Taiwan's health insurance industry. The TMT standards seeks to achieve functional and semantic interoperability in electronic health records (EHRs).

Personal health records (PHRs) have lots of benefits for things such as health surveillance, epidemiological surveillance, self-control, links to various services, public health and health management, and international surveillance. The implementation of an international standard for interoperability is essential to accessing personal health records. In Taiwan, the nationwide exchange platform for electronic medical records (EMRs) has been in use for many years. The Health Level Seven International (HL7) Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) was used as the standard of the EMRs. However, the complication of implementing CDA became a barrier for many hospitals to realize the standard EMRs. In this study, we implemented a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-based PHR transformation process including a user interface module to review the contents of PHRs. We used "My Health Bank, MHB", a PHR data book developed and issued to all people by the Taiwan National Health Insurance, as the PHRs contents in this study. Network Time Protocol (NTP)/Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) was used in the security and user authentication mechanism when processing and applying personal health information. Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 (such as HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) was used for protection in data communication. User authentication is important in the platform. OAuth (OAuth 2.0) was used as a user authentication mechanism to confirm legitimate user access to ensure data security. The contents of MHB were analyzed and mapped to the FHIR, and then converted to FHIR format according to the mapping logic template. The function of format conversion was carried out by using ASP.NET. XPath and JSPath technologies filtered out specific information tags. The converted data structure was verified through an HL7 Application Programming Interface (HAPI) server, and a new JSON file was finally created. This platform can not only capture any PHR based on the FHIR format but also publish FHIR-based MHB records to any other platform to bridge the interoperability gap between different PHR systems. Therefore, our implementation/application with the automatic transformation from MHB to FHIR format provides an innovative method for people to access their own PHRs (MHB). No one has published a similar application like us using a nationwide PHR standard, MHB, in Taiwan. The application we developed will be very useful for a single person to use or for other system developers to implement their own standard PHR software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]