News & Media
July, 2026
Ms. Trithi Sunder won the Best Poster Award in the 2026 Graduate Student Research Day Poster Competition for her poster entitled, Role of Interferon Regulatory Factor 7 (IRF7) in Macrophage in Dermal Fibrosis in Systemic Sclerosis.
June, 2026
Drs. Mills and Assassi were awarded an R01 grant from National Institute of Health, entitled “Hypoxia-Driven NUDT21-Mediated APA Promotes Lung and Skin Fibrosis in Systemic Sclerosis.”
June, 2026
Dr. Assassi gave an invited talk at European Alliance of Associations for Rheuamtology (EULAR) Annual Meeting on “Scleroderma disease stratification with mechanistic insights” in London, United Kingdom.
June, 2026
Dr. Skaug was awarded an R03 grant from the National Institutes of Health entitled “Pulmonary arterial hypertension susceptibility in systemic sclerosis patients with the DNASE1L3 R206C variant.”
May, 2026
Dr. Assassi gave an invited talk at Scleroderma Clinical Trials Consortium on the impact of background treatment for clinical trial design in Nashville, TN, USA
May, 2026
Dr. Skaug was an invited speaker at the 53rd annual Ishmael Rheumatology Symposium at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, where he gave a talk entitled “systemic sclerosis in its early stages: current and future approaches to assessment, diagnosis, and personalized management.”
March, 2026
Dr. Assassi was featured on ACR Journals on Air Podcast to discuss his recent publication on how peripheral blood gene expression modules can predict the course of interstitial lung disease in patients with systemic sclerosis: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/peripheral-blood-gene-expression-and-scleroderma-lung/id1645532434?i=1000758391908 (external link)
March, 2026
Dr. Skaug gave a talk entitled “Pulmonary arterial hypertension susceptibility in systemic sclerosis patients with the DNASE1L3 rs35677470 (Arg206Cys) variant” at the biennial Systemic Sclerosis World Congress in Athens, Greece.
February, 2026
Dr. Assassi gave an invited talk at State of Texas Association of Rheumatologists Annual Meeting on “Systemic sclerosis: Updates on disease course prediction and treatment” in Grapevine, TX, USA
November, 2025
Dr. Hwang gave an invited talk at 2025 Spondyloarthropathy Symposium on “Inflammatory Back Pain in the U.S. Population: Insights beyond HLA-B27 and CRP” in Puerto Rico, USA
August, 2025
Dr. Bich Na Choi won the SCTC Kao Family Travel Award for her oral presentation, entitled “Statistical and Bayesian Machine Learning Approaches for Longitudinal Multi-Omics Integration in Complex Autoimmune Disease” at International Workshop on Scleroderma Research in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
May, 2025
Dr. Hwang gave a talk on “HLA-B27 positivity is not associated with Inflammatory Back Pain in the US population” at the Annual SPARTAN Meeting, Toronto, Canada
May, 2025
Dr. Skaug gave a talk on “DNASE1L3 polymorphism in systemic sclerosis pathogenesis” at the Rheumatology Research Foundation Investigators’ Meeting, Seattle, WA, USA
April, 2025
Dr. Assassi gave an invited talk at the Japanese College of Rheumatology Annual Scientific Meeting on “Personalized Medicine in Systemic Sclerosis: Current Status and the Road Ahead” in Fukuoka, Japan.
January, 2025
Dr. Assassi gave the invited talk at MD Anderson Cell Therapy Institute on “Systemic sclerosis: Current treatment landscape and potential role of cell therapy” in Houston, TX, USA
November, 2024
Dr. Assassi gave an invited lecture on the “New Insights into Biomarkers and Biology of Systemic Sclerosis-ILD” at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Convergence Meeting in Washington, DC, USA
November, 2024
Dr. Nikitin gave an oral presentation on “Optical coherence angiography: A non-invasive, safe method for assessing the systemic sclerosis related vasculopathy beyond nailfold capillaries” at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Convergence Meeting in Washington, DC, USA
November, 2024
Dr. Desai gave an oral presentation on “Assessment of skin in patients with systemic sclerosis using high-frequency ultrasound: A comparative study with histology and clinical parameters of skin disease” at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Convergence Meeting in Washington, DC, USA
October, 2024
Dr. Assassi published a senior-authored manuscript on the association of FAM13A polymorphism with usual interstitial pneumonia pattern in patients with systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease in Rheumatology (Oxford) (external link).
October, 2024
Dr. Assassi gave an invited talk on “pulmonary fibrosis with autoimmune features” at the annual CHEST Conference in Boston, MA, USA
September, 2024
Drs. Mills and Assassi published a manuscript on the role of MiR-181 in skin fibrosis pathogenesis by targeting NUDT21 in FASEB Journal (external link).
August, 2024
Dr. Wareing published a first-authored manuscript on the long-term molecular changes resulting from myeloablation followed by hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in Arthritis and Rheumatology (external link).
March, 2024
Dr. Assassi gave an invited lecture on “biomarkers in systemic sclerosis, input for clinical practice and randomized clinical trials” at the Systemic Sclerosis World Congress in Prague, Czech Republic.
February, 2024
Dr. Assassi gave an invited lecture on “systemic sclerosis-related autoantibodies useful tools for patient stratification” at the State of Texas Association of Rheumatologists Annual Meeting in Houston, TX, USA.
January, 2024
Drs. Assassi and Larin gave an invited talk on the “translational optical coherence elastography for assessment of systemic sclerosis” at SPIE Photonics West 2024 conference in San Francisco, CA, USA.