Trojanowska and her team have focused on various aspects of collagen research begun by LeRoy. She cites many reasons why progress in this area of research has been at a crawl. The problem has only recently been attributed to the molecular level, she said. Today, there are better tools available, and with the explosion of new information from the Human Genome Project, it s now only a matter of who s going to get there first, Trojanowska said. Her study of human fibroblasts from scleroderma patients has yielded good results.
Fibroblasts are the cells in the human skin responsible for producing collagen.
Just having a better understanding of how collagen is produced will enable scientists to design better drugs to block its excessive formation in scleroderma patients, Silver said. Research teams like Dr. Marie Trojanowska of MUSC's Division Rheumatology and Immunology have progressed in reearch related to scleroderma. Trojanowska is studying how fibroblasts regulate the connective tissue also found in the production of most internal organs. She suspects the problem may lie on a molecular level, which involves a miscommunication or signaling problem in the production and secretion of collagen. Too much collagen production can disrupt the delicate architecture of any internal organ, Trojanowska said.