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Wireless power charging for mobile devices becomes more and more attractive, as the majority of the state-of-the-art devices offer this feature. Space sensitive applications often require ultra-low height of the charging station itself. In case of portable devices, it also needs to have less weight too. Greater number of all wireless charging stations cannot offer such feature. This paper describes a concept for ultra-thin wireless charging stations. Advanced printed circuit board design and manufacturing with PCB integrated nanocrystalline sheets helps to optimize the antenna circuit as well as the performance, while reducing the height and weight at the same time. To be comparable to standard devices available at the market, a Qi charging circuit on bottom side controls the antenna.

Copoly(2-oxazoline)-based photoresists are prepared from pEtOx(80) Bu(=) Ox(20) and pPhOx(80) Dc(=) Ox(20) , respectively, a tetrathiol, and a photosensitive initiator. It is possible to prepare copoly(2-oxazoline)s bearing unsaturated side chains in a microwave reactor on a decagram scale in reaction times of 100 min or shorter. UV irradiation of dried polymer films through a quartz mask induces the thiol-ene reaction in the illuminated areas. Subsequent development of the polymer films in halogen-free solvents reproduces the negative pattern of the mask with a resolution of 2 μm. The pEtOx(80) Bu(=) Ox(20) -derived photoresists can also be developed in water.

Live, attenuated bacterial vaccines (LBV) are promising candidates for the induction of a broad-based immune response directed at recombinant heterologous antigens and the corresponding pathogen. LBVs allow vaccination through the mucosal surfaces and specific targeting of professional antigen-presenting cells located at the inductive sites of the immune system. A novel approach exploits attenuated intracellular bacteria as delivery vectors for eukaryotic antigen-expression plasmids (so-called DNA vaccines). Candidate carrier bacteria include attenuated strains of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. These bacteria have been shown to deliver DNA vaccines to human cells in vitro and have also proven their in vivo efficacy in several experimental animal models of infectious diseases and different cancers. The clinical assessment of the safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of these candidate strains will be the next challenging step towards live bacterial DNA vaccines.

A permanently growing body of information is becoming available about the quality of protective immune responses induced by mucosal immunization. Attenuated live bacterial vaccines can be administered orally and induce long-lasting protective immunity in humans without causing major side effects. An attenuated Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi strain is registered as live oral vaccine against typhoid fever and has been in use for more than two decades. Recombinant attenuated Salmonella strains are also an attractive means of delivering heterologous antigens to the immune system, thereby, stimulating strong mucosal and systemic immune responses and consequently provide an efficient platform technology to design novel vaccination strategies. This includes the choice of heterologous protective antigens and their expression under the control of appropriate promoters within the carrier strain. The availability of well-characterized attenuated mutants of Salmonella concomitantly supports fine tuning of immune response triggered against heterologous antigens. Exploring different mucosal sites as a potential route of immunization has to be taken into account as an additional important way to modulate immune responses according to clinical requirements. This article focuses on the rational design of strategies to modulate appropriate immunological effector functions on the basis of selection of (i) attenuating mutations of the Salmonella strains, (ii) specific expression systems for the heterologous antigens, and (iii) route of mucosal administration.

Modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) has been used as an experimental vaccine vector against respiratory infections. We have tested the safety and immunogenicity of a recombinant virus expressing the hemagglutinin of measles virus (MVA-MV-H) using the mouse model of measles virus induced encephalitis and the cotton rat model for respiratory infection. MVA-MV-H proved to induce a TH1 response, neutralizing antibodies and conferred protection against both encephalitis and lung infection. The cotton rat is very sensitive to infection with replication competent vaccinia virus. In these animals MVA-MV-H proved to be a very well tolerated vaccine. However, the efficiency in the presence of MV specific maternal antibodies was low (even using a prime-boost strategy) and therefore might have to be improved.

BALB/c mice are resistant to measles virus (MV)-induced encephalitis due to their strong MV-specific CD4+T-cell response. Resistance is broken by neutralization of gamma interferon with monoclonal antibodies, indicating an important role for this pleiotropic cytokine. Here, we demonstrate that mouse gamma interferon has no direct antiviral effect in vitro and in vivo. The breakdown of resistance is due neither to a switch in the T-helper response nor to an impaired migration of CD4+T cells. Neutralization of gamma interferon interferes with the major histocompatibility complex class II-dependent antigen presentation and subsequent proliferation of CD4+T cells in vitro and in vivo. In consequence, the reduction in numbers of CD4+T cells below a protective threshold leads to susceptibility to MV-induced encephalitis.

Immunization via the oral route with an attenuated Yersinia enterocolitica strain expressing a fragment of the measles virus nucleocapsid protein (aa 79–161) via its type III protein secretion system induced a T helper type 1 response in immunized C3H mice, which conferred protection against measles virus-induced encephalitis in a time- and dose-dependent manner.

Measles virus (MV) infection still belongs to the most important infectious diseases world wide. To identify the components of the immune system that combat MV infection, infection models in rodents have been established. In rats and mice, the immune response to experimental MV infection is governed by the major histocombatibility complex (MHC). According to the MHC haplotype, the functional composition of the T-cell subsets determines the degree of susceptibility to experimental measles virus infection. CD4+ T-cells are the most important T-cell subset in combating experimental MV infection in rodents. However, the mechanism of action still remains to be elucidated.

In the present study we describe a live vaccine against measles virus (MV) infection on the basis of attenuated Salmonella typhimurium aroA secreting MV antigens via the Escherichia coli alpha-hemolysin secretion system. Two well-characterized MV epitopes, a B-cell epitope of the MV fusion protein (amino acids 404-414) and a T-cell epitope of the MV nucleocapsid protein (amino acids 79-99) were fused as single or repeating units to the C-terminal secretion signal of the E. coli hemolysin and expressed in secreted form by the attenuated S. typhimurium aroA SL7207. Immunization of MV-susceptible C3H mice revealed that S. typhimurium SL7207 secreting these antigens provoked a humoral and a cellular MV-specific immune response, respectively. Mice vaccinated orally with a combination of both recombinant S. typhimurium strains showed partial protection against a lethal MV encephalitis after intracerebral challenge with a rodent-adapted, neurotropic MV strain.

Depending on their major histocompatibility complex (MHC) haplotype, inbred mouse strains are either resistant (H2-d, BALB/c), susceptible (H2-k, C3H) or partially resistant (H2-d×k, BaCF1) to intracerebral infection with the neurotropic rodent-adapted measles virus (MV) strain CAM/RBH. Here, mortality is demonstrated to be correlated directly with virus spread and virus replication in the CNS and to be inversely correlated with the activation of MV-specific T cells. Previously, it has been shown that primary CD4+ T cells alone are protective in the resistant background. In the susceptible background, CD4+ T cells acquire protective capacity after immunization with a newly defined CD4+ T cell epitope peptide. In the partially resistant mice, CD4+ T cells provide help for CD8+ T cells and protect in cooperation with them. It seems that the lytic capacity of CD8+ T cells is crucial in providing protection, as MV-specific Ld-restricted CD8+ T cells, which are highly lytic in vitro after transfer, protect naive animals against MV-induced encephalitis (MVE). In contrast, Kk-restricted CD8+ T cells with low lytic capacity do not protect. In the MVE model, CD4+ T cells are able to protect either alone (resistant mice), through cooperation with CD8+ T cells (intermediate susceptible) or after immunization as secondary T cells (susceptible mice). CD8+ T cells are able to protect alone after immunization if they are cytolytic. Thus, susceptibility and resistance depend upon the functional composition of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells governed by the MHC haplotype.