• Male and female participants \>= 18 and =\< 70 years (at the time of the screening visit).

• Diagnosis of systemic sclerosis, as defined by the 2013 American College of Rheumatology/ European League Against Rheumatism (ACR/EULAR) classification criteria for SSc (van den Hoogen et al 2013) and meet the dcSSc subset classification according to LeRoy (LeRoy 1988)

• Disease duration of =\< 60 months (defined as time from the first non-Raynaud phenomenon manifestation, e.g., puffy hands, scleroderma, digital ulcers, arthralgia, dyspnea)

• mRSS units of \>= 15 and =\< 45 at the time of the screening visit

• Active disease that meets at least one of the following criteria at screening:

‣ Disease duration of =\< 18 months defined as time from the first non-Raynaud phenomenon manifestation

⁃ Increase in mRSS of \>= 3 units compared with the most recent assessment performed within the previous 6 months

⁃ Involvement of one new body area and an increase in mRSS of \>= 2 units compared with the most recent assessment performed within the previous 6 months

⁃ Involvement of two new body areas within the previous 6 months

⁃ Elevated acute phase reactants (ESR) \>= 30 mm/hr or high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) \>= 6 mg/L)

⁃ Presence of SSc-interstitial lung disease (ILD) and ATA autoantibody positivity

⁃ Modified EUSTAR disease activity index (mDAI) ≥ 2.5

• Participant must be positive for at least one of the following autoantibodies:

‣ anti-topoisomerase I (ATA) (also known as anti-SCL-70)

⁃ anti-RNA polymerase III (anti-RNAP3)

⁃ anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) (≥ 1:80) Participants who are positive only for ANA (while being negative for both ATA /anti-RNAP3) will be limited to 30% of the overall randomized study population.