The development of an effective and durable vaccine remains a central goal in the fight against malaria. Circumsporozoite protein (CSP) is the major surface protein of sporozoites and the target of the only licensed Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) malaria vaccine, RTS,S/AS01. However, vaccine efficacy is low and short-lived, highlighting the need for a second-generation vaccine with superior efficacy and durability. Here, we report a Helicobacter pylori apoferritin-based nanoparticle immunogen that elicits strong B cell responses against PfCSP epitopes that are targeted by the most potent human monoclonal antibodies. Glycan engineering of the scaffold and fusion of an exogenous T cell epitope enhanced the anti-PfCSP B cell response eliciting strong, long-lived and protective humoral immunity in mice. Our study highlights the power of rational vaccine design to generate a highly efficacious second-generation anti-infective malaria vaccine candidate and provides the basis for its further development.

In the last year, the AIMS® EUV has been extended to applications beyond the native defectivity review, such as the metrology of EUV Phase Shift Masks (PSM). The technology developed for the AIMS® EUV Phase metrology application enables the measurement of the phase difference between the absorber reflected light relative to the light reflected by the multilayer. A reliable information over the mask phase is important for process control in the mask production chain, as well as for the optimization of the wafer exposure process on the scanner. In this paper we will describe the challenges of enabling a precise metrology for the mask phase and will investigate the advantages of employing EUV phase metrology capability as process of record in the mask shop for different engineering and production steps: etch control, imaging optimization and wafer process window enhancement.

Single-cell antigen-receptor gene amplification and sequencing platforms have been used to characterize T cell receptor (TCR) repertoires but typically fail to generate paired full-length gene products for direct expression cloning and do not enable linking this data to cell phenotype information. To overcome these limitations, we established a high-throughput platform for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of human TCR repertoires that provides insights into the clonal and functional composition of human CD4+ and CD8+ αβ T cells at the molecular and cellular level. The strategy is a powerful tool to qualitatively assess differences between antigen receptors of phenotypically defined αβ T cell subsets, e.g. in immune responses to cancer, vaccination, or infection, and in autoimmune diseases.