The IHU of Montpellier launches an appeal to Céline Dion

While a documentary on the singer was released on Tuesday June 25, the IHU of Montpellier is launching an appeal for it to help finance research against her illness.

The IHU of Montpellier is launching an appeal to Céline 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 fighting for years against stiff person syndrome (PRS), an autoimmune disease, with no known cure, which causes acute 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,” affirms the director of the university hospital institute Christian Jorgensen, who specifies however that success is not 100% guaranteed.

The proposal is therefore to finance research. Currently the IHU teams are “mobilized 200% on three diseases: lupus, polyarthritis and scleroderma”. Stiff person syndrome only affects 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 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”.