Funding over the next five years will support an endowed chair to advance research in SPS and other rare autoimmune neurological disorders; expand the CU Anschutz disease registry and biorepository; and accelerate the time to diagnosis as a first step toward improving patients’ quality of life. According to CU Anschutz, approximately two in 100,000 people are affected by the disorder.
“This is just the start of a very bright future for those with the disease,” said Céline Dion, the Canadian singer who announced her SPS diagnosis in December 2022. “Number one, it’s going to bring public awareness. With public awareness, we understand and diagnose this better....This is going to be highly impactful for stiff person syndrome as well as other autoimmune neurologic disorders.”
“We need better therapies for patients,” said CU Anschutz director of the autoimmune neurology Amanda Piquet. “Ultimately, what we’d love is a cure. And once we cure SPS, I think we’re going to be on the road to curing more autoimmune neurologic diseases, because fundamentally it is understanding the immune system’s impact on the nervous system. But, in the meantime, we need better therapies.”
"CU Anschutz receives $2 million from the Céline Dion Foundation to advance autoimmune neurologic disorders research ." University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus press release 06/18/2024.
