ACTA1 and systemic sclerosis: Treatment with AdipoRon ex vivo resulted in variable suppression of fibrotic gene expression in SSc and normal fibroblasts, but the effects were considerably stronger in SSc fibroblasts (Fig. 7b), especially for α-SMA (the fold induction, 0.61 ± 0.13 versus 1.04 ± 0.09 [p < 0.05] for α-SMA and 0.32 ± 0.11 versus 0.55 ± 0.17 [p = 0.30] for type I collagen).