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Dermatology Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Dermatology

Adipocytes And Innate Immunity In Systemic Sclerosis, Nancy Wareing May 2023

Adipocytes And Innate Immunity In Systemic Sclerosis, Nancy Wareing

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Systemic sclerosis (SSc; scleroderma) is a chronic systemic autoimmune and connective tissue disorder characterized by vasculopathy, autoimmune phenomena, and widespread fibrosis. Skin thickening and tightening is the cardinal feature of SSc and is responsible, in part, for the considerable morbidity of this disease. There are currently no targeted treatments for skin manifestations in SSc, primarily due to our fragmented understanding of its pathophysiologic mechanisms. In PART I, we report a previously unappreciated link between aberrant expression of the developmental gene sine oculis homeobox homolog 1 (SIX1) in skin-associated adipocytes in SSc skin and the early loss of dermal white adipose …


Reduced Spag17 Expression In Systemic Sclerosis Triggers Myofibroblast Transition And Drives Fibrosis, Paulene Sapao, Elisha D O Roberson, Bo Shi, Shervin Assassi, Brian Skaug, Fred Lee, Alexandra Naba, Bethany E Perez White, Carlos Córdova-Fletes, Pei-Suen Tsou, Amr H Sawalha, Johann E Gudjonsson, Feiyang Ma, Priyanka Verma, Dibyendu Bhattacharyya, Mary Carns, Jerome F Strauss, Delphine Sicard, Daniel J Tschumperlin, Melissa I Champer, Paul J Campagnola, Maria E Teves, John Varga Feb 2023

Reduced Spag17 Expression In Systemic Sclerosis Triggers Myofibroblast Transition And Drives Fibrosis, Paulene Sapao, Elisha D O Roberson, Bo Shi, Shervin Assassi, Brian Skaug, Fred Lee, Alexandra Naba, Bethany E Perez White, Carlos Córdova-Fletes, Pei-Suen Tsou, Amr H Sawalha, Johann E Gudjonsson, Feiyang Ma, Priyanka Verma, Dibyendu Bhattacharyya, Mary Carns, Jerome F Strauss, Delphine Sicard, Daniel J Tschumperlin, Melissa I Champer, Paul J Campagnola, Maria E Teves, John Varga

Journal Articles

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a clinically heterogeneous fibrotic disease with no effective treatment. Myofibroblasts are responsible for unresolving synchronous skin and internal organ fibrosis in SSc, but the drivers of sustained myofibroblast activation remain poorly understood. Using unbiased transcriptome analysis of skin biopsies, we identified the downregulation of SPAG17 in multiple independent cohorts of patients with SSc, and by orthogonal approaches, we observed a significant negative correlation between SPAG17 and fibrotic gene expression. Fibroblasts and endothelial cells explanted from SSc skin biopsies showed reduced chromatin accessibility at the SPAG17 locus. Remarkably, mice lacking Spag17 showed spontaneous skin fibrosis with increased …