Kristina Pfau Receives Career Development Award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness
We are pleased to share that PD Dr. Kristina Pfau has been awarded a Career Development Award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB).
The award provides $375,000 in research support over five years and supports Kristina’s research program on functional biomarkers and disease mechanisms in degenerative retinal disorders. She is the first German physician to receive this award.
A central focus of the funded work is the development of more sensitive approaches for detecting early functional impairment in age-related macular degeneration (AMD). In particular, the project investigates dark adaptation and rod-mediated visual function, which can be affected at disease stages when conventional measures of visual performance remain comparatively preserved.
The research will also extend these concepts to pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE), a rare inherited disorder associated with characteristic retinal changes. By combining detailed functional testing with imaging, clinical phenotyping, and genetic information, the project aims to improve our understanding of factors that determine disease severity and progression.
A broader objective is to establish functional measures that can capture subtle disease-related changes and serve as meaningful endpoints in longitudinal studies and future interventional trials. This work builds on our group’s longstanding interest in the relationship between retinal structure, photoreceptor function, and visual performance in early and intermediate stages of retinal degeneration.
The Career Development Award provides an important opportunity to further develop this research program and to strengthen translational approaches aimed at characterizing retinal disease before substantial vision loss occurs.
We are grateful to the Foundation Fighting Blindness for this significant support and for its continued investment in researchers working toward a better understanding and treatment of retinal disease.
Read the announcement from the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn