TGFB1 and systemic sclerosis: Huang et al. (2019) found that TGF-β can mediate ECM stiffness through LOXs using two in vitro models containing fibroblasts from SSc patients. LOXs can also directly induce the production of ECM at the transcriptional level by changing the metabolism of fibroblasts, thus directly participating in the process of fibrosis (Nguyen et al., 2021).