“If someone comes with 10 million euros, I do it”: the call for help from the IHU of Montpellier to find a treatment for Céline Dion syndrome

La chanteuse souffre de cette maladie très rare qui ne touche qu'une cinquantaine de personnes en France. MAXPPP – Graham Hughes

Christian Jorgensen, director of the IHU of Montpellier, launched an appeal to Céline Dion. He judges that with financial assistance from the singer, his teams would be able to develop a treatment for the illness she suffers from, stiff person syndrome.

Near France Bleu Hérault, Christian Jorgensen, the director of the Immun4cure university hospital institute in Montpellier, launched this Wednesday, June 26, an appeal to Céline Dion, in order to find a treatment for the stiff person syndrome, from which she suffers the singer,  an autoimmune disease with no cure and which causes acute pain, difficulty moving and spasms.

"It's not a joke at all, if someone today comes with 10 million' #39;euros telling me make me a biomedicine, I do it. In two years it will be ready", declares Christian Jorgensen to our colleagues at France Bleu. An amount&nbsp ;which doesn't represent "not much" for Céline Dion, but which could change the lives of several people.

"A market that interests no one"

The professor says he got in touch with the singer's teams, but this "didn't follow through". "These are not necessarily people to whom we can propose a scientific development plan, so I don't think that Céline Dion would -even had a concrete proposal but maybe with the press, it could reach her".

Stiff person syndrome is an extremely rare disease, which affects around fifty people "at most" in France, according to Christian Jorgensen. A potential treatment is therefore "a market that interests no one". It's for this reason that the director of the IHU turns to Céline Dion.