Site-Specific Differentiation of Fibroblasts in Normal and Scleroderma Skin

Abstract : The central hypothesis of this research is that the site-specific differentiation of fibroblasts plays an important role in the anatomic specificity of systemic sclerosis (SSc). During the funding period, (i) we identified appropriate markers and technologies for systematic investigation of the positional identity of fibroblasts, both in normal and diseased tissues. (ii) We found that long noncoding RNAs are the predominant position specific output of the HOX loci, and their misexpression in systemic sclerosis suggests that altered fibroblast positional identity is involved. (iii) Ongoing studies suggest that some long noncoding RNAs are being mis-expressed in activated fibroblasts from SSc.