IL6 and systemic sclerosis: Because IL-11 is an IL-6 family cytokine, that uses similar downstream signaling pathways as IL-6 and we have shown that this is both pro-fibrotic in SSc and is also elevated in the sera of patients (Adami et al., 2021) we posited that this cytokine would increase Gremlin-1 levels in dermal fibroblasts.