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Systemic treatment approaches are urgently needed for a subset of meningioma patients who do not achieve local tumor control with surgery and radiotherapy. Classical chemotherapy or anti-angiogenic agents exert only very limited activity in these tumors. Long-term survival of patients with advanced metastatic cancer following treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors, i.e., monoclonal antibodies designed to unleash suppressed anticancer immune responses, has fostered hopes for benefit from similar approaches in patients with meningiomas that recur after standard local therapy. Moreover, a plethora of immunotherapy approaches beyond these drugs have entered clinical development or clinical practice for other cancer entities, including (i) novel immune checkpoint inhibitors that may act independently of T cell activity, (ii) cancer peptide or dendritic cell vaccines to induce anticancer immunity utilizing cancer-associated antigens, (iii) cellular therapies utilizing genetically modified peripheral blood cells to directly target cancer cells, (iv) T cell engaging recombinant proteins that link tumor antigen-binding sites to effector cell activating or recognition domains, or to immunogenic cytokines, and (v) oncolytic virotherapy utilizing attenuated viral vectors designed to specifically infect cancer cells, seeking to elicit systemic anticancer immunity. This chapter provides an overview of the principles of immunotherapy, summarizes ongoing immunotherapy clinical trials in meningioma patients, and discusses the applicability of established and emerging immunotherapy concepts to meningioma patients.

The world is rapidly moving towards a greener future, a mainstay of which is solar energy. Hence, maximum power point trackers, or MPPTs for short, are an indispensable component, since these devices provide one with the capability to fully maximize the achievable power from solar cells in a system. A symbol of the greener world that is evolving around us is the biannual World Solar Challenge, where state-of-the-art solar powered cars race against one another through the deserts of Australia. This thesis forms the link between these two elements: to design an MPPT optimally suited towards the requirements of the Nuna Solar Car. Commercially available MPPTs are not particularly well suited for the specific demands of such a bleeding edge race. They are mostly designed for high power or low voltage systems. The MPPT designed during this thesis is optimized for high efficiency and other requests stated by the Nuon Solar Team members. The design of the MPPT has been split into several parts. This thesis is focused on the converter within the MPPT. It presents the result of research, design exploration, simulation and testing. The results obtained with the prototype that has been built show the designs correctness and conformance to the requirements, with an efficiency of up to 98,5%., Bachelor EE, Electrical Power Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

The world is rapidly moving towards a greener future, a mainstay of which is solar energy. Hence, maximum power point trackers, or MPPTs for short, are an indispensable component, since these devices provide one with the capability to fully maximize the achievable power from solar cells in a system. A symbol of the greener world that is evolving around us is the biannual World Solar Challenge, where state-of-the-art solar powered cars race against one another through the deserts of Australia. This thesis forms the link between these two elements: to design an MPPT optimally suited towards the requirements of the Nuna Solar Car. Commercially available MPPTs are not particularly well suited for the specific demands of such a bleeding edge race. They are mostly designed for high power or low voltage systems. The MPPT designed during this thesis is optimized for high efficiency and other requests stated by the Nuon Solar Team members. The design of the MPPT has been split into several parts. This thesis is focused on the converter within the MPPT. It presents the result of research, design exploration, simulation and testing. The results obtained with the prototype that has been built show the designs correctness and conformance to the requirements, with an efficiency of up to 98,5%., Bachelor EE, Electrical Power Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science