Dr. Richard Burt is a Professor of medicine at the Northwestern University and has authored two Lancet publications on the results of autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for systemic sclerosis. Dr Burt performed the first randomized trial of autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for systemic sclerosis that was published in The Lancet in 2011. After that Dr Burt published the results of a larger study of autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for systemic sclerosis from two centers, Northwestern University in the USA and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. This was published in The Lancet in 2013. These two Lancet publications showed some thing that had never before happened in patients with systemic sclerosis, that is after this treatment the patients skin and lungs markedly improved and they required no further medications. After the procedure most patients have gone more than 5 years with improvement and no further medications.

Since publishing these two landmark articles in The Lancet, a European study confirmed Dr Burt's results in a multiple center European trial.. The European results were published in JAMA in 2014 and confirmed Dr Burts Lancet results. Thereafter, another American study was reported in The NEJM in 2018 that again confirmed Dr Burt's results that autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is superior to drugs.