Advances at the interface of cancer and systemic sclerosis

Abstract

The interface between systemic sclerosis and cancer has offered valuable insights into our understanding of systemic sclerosis disease pathogenesis. Defining systemic sclerosis subgroups both temporally and serologically has been instrumental in stratifying cancer risk, with autoantibodies to RNA polymerase 3, RNA polymerase 1 large subunit, RNA binding region containing 3, and centromere identifying subgroups at increased or decreased risk of cancer. Clinically, improved subgrouping of systemic sclerosis patients provides the opportunity to detect cancer at earlier stages of disease while increasing our efficiency of cancer assessment. Additional studies are needed to define the optimal approach to cancer screening in systemic sclerosis, and validation studies in different cohorts will be needed to confirm all findings.