The IHU (University Hospital Institute) of Montpellier is launching an appeal to the star. According to the director of the institute, 10 million euros would be needed to launch a specific research program on the illness from which the singer suffers: stiff person syndrome.
The IHU (Institut Hospitalo Universitaire) of Montpellier is launching an appeal to Celine Dion, indicating that with 10 million euros, the institute could launch a specific research program on the singer’s illness, France Bleu Hérault reported this Wednesday.
In the documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” released Tuesday on Prime Video, the singer talks about her illness. The 56-year-old Canadian has been battling stiff person syndrome (RPS) for years, an autoimmune disease with no known cure that causes severe pain, difficulty moving and spasms.
The IHU, the University Hospital Institute, of Montpellier is therefore launching an appeal to the singer: “If someone today comes with 10 million euros and says make me a biomedicine, I’ll do it,” says the director of the Institute Christian Jorgensen, who nevertheless points out that success is not 100% guaranteed.
If someone today comes with 10 million euros and says make me a biomedicine, I’ll do it.
Christian JorgensenDirector IHU Montpellier
It would give a boost to research for the small rare disease community and then, quite quickly, “We could offer her a specific solution. I think that for her, 10 million euros is not much, and it is not a joke at all,” poursuit Christian Jorgensen.
The proposal is therefore to finance research. Currently the IHU teams are “mobilized at 200% on three diseases: lupus, polyarthritis and scleroderma“.
Stiff Person Syndrome affects only a few patients worldwide: “50 at most in France, it’s a market that interests no one”, regrets the professor who affirms that the Institute has all the necessary skills: “We can target and destroy the immune cells which produce the antibodies which turn against the body itself. Today we do it to treat polyarthritis and lupus, we know how to do it.”
Christian Jorgensen was already in contact last year with the star’s teams but “It didn’t work out, it was still very complicated to get her to come to Montpellier,” he explains. He adds: “I don’t think Celine Dion herself had a concrete proposal like that but maybe with the press it can reach her.”
This time, in any case, all the press is talking about it!
