Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease which severely harms the health of human beings. Autoimmune disease has become a hot field of research in recent years, study of SSc, however, is lagged far behind from that of such diseases as systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. In 2009, with the cooperation of Fudan University and other institutions in China, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, U.S.A. successfully applied for the UO1 research project o……