Hormel Institute Scientists publish research that could lead to new treatments and prevention of a group of rare diseases

The Hormel Institute’s Rafael Contreras-Galindo, PhD, Assistant Professor and leader of the Genome Instability and Chromosome Biology research section, has published a major discovery in scleroderma.

Scleroderma is a group of rare diseases that can be fatal. Problems arise in the blood vessels and internal
organs, often also associated with hardening and tightening of the skin. Dr. Contreras-Galindo’s team has shed important new light on how scar tissue forms in scleroderma, a process known as fibrosis.

The research article is entitled “Centromere defects, chromosome instability, and cGAS-STING activation in systemic sclerosis” and was published in the prestigious research journal Nature Communications.

The research was supported by the National Scleroderma Foundation.