Publications by authors named "Zhenyu Chu"

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most common cancer for male health with ultrahigh recurrence rates to cause high mortality. However, clinical imaging and biopsy techniques suffer the bulky testing equipment and high cost, and blood assay requires blood pretreatment before analysis to significantly restrict home-in self-examination and postoperative follow-up of PCa. Herein, a blood-drop 4-min-test technique is designed to precisely screen PCa by a high-ordered coaxial-nanocables-based aptasensor.

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High-purity H production accompanied by precise decarbonization paves the way for a carbon-neutral society. Hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs) are promising materials for advanced gas separation membranes, but their broad nanoscale pores limit selective separation. High-quality carboxylic acid-based HOF membranes (HOF-S, HOF-M, HOF-L) with pore sizes of 6.

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Saliva is a non-invasive, easily collected fluid ideal for health monitoring, but its ultralow metabolite concentrations make accurate detection challenging for current analytical tools, limiting its clinical diagnostic use. Here, a homogeneous nanogrid film composed of Prussian blue/Au nanogrid (PB/AuNG) to fabricate salivary biosensors for diagnosing oral diseases is fabricated. The PB/AuNG nanogrid film allows for the uniform immobilization of oxidase enzymes or antibodies, thereby substantially enhancing the detection sensitivity for trace salivary biomarkers.

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Viral hepatitis is a highly infectious disease caused by various hepatitis viruses that, thus far, have no cure. In early viral invasion, a low viral load in the blood makes early detection difficult unless the symptoms are severe. Herein, a new ultrasensitive and ultrafast hepatitis virus detection strategy is proposed by constructing a dual-surface-activated nanotube that enables recognition probes to not only bind to the outer surface of the nanotube but also penetrate and lock onto its inner surface.

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Objective: The expressions and prognostic value of serum Lectin Mannose-Binding 2 (LMAN2) and Sestrin2 were evaluated in septic shock patients, aiming to provide new biomarkers for early diagnosis and prognosis judgment of septic shock patients.

Methods: This retrospective study included 110 patients with sepsis and 50 healthy control subjects. Patients were classified into the sepsis group (SE group, 63 cases) or septic shock group (SS group, 47 cases) based on the occurrence of septic shock.

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Background: Hyperlipidemic acute pancreatitis (HLAP) is a severe condition marked by elevated triglyceride levels, resulting in significant morbidity. Current treatment options are limited, highlighting the need for effective therapeutic combinations.

Methods: This study was conducted from January 2020 to December 2023 at the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University.

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Background: High-resolution brain imaging is crucial in clinical diagnosis and neuroscience, with ultra-high field strength MRI systems ( ) offering significant advantages for imaging neuronal microstructures. However, achieving magnetic field homogeneity is challenging due to engineering faults during the installation of superconducting strip windings and the primary magnet.

Purpose: This study aims to design and optimize active superconducting shim coils for a 7 T animal MRI system, focusing on the impact of safety margin, size, and adjustability of the second-order shim coils on the MRI system's optimization.

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The ratiometric sensing strategy, which uses dual-signal output, drastically compensates for the background noise and interference from the detection environment, compared to the sensing methods that rely on a single-signal output. However, the stability of the reference signal has become the primary challenge in constructing a ratiometric detection sensor. Therefore, in order to achieve stable ratiometric signal sensing, methylene blue (MB) was encapsulated in the UiO-66-NH framework and printed as a reference signal onto a screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE), facilitating the precise detection of miR-21-5p.

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The abuse of kanamycin (KAN) poses an increasing threat to human health by contaminating agricultural and animal husbandry products, drinking water, and more. Therefore, the sensitive detection of trace KAN residues in real samples is crucial for monitoring agricultural pollution, ensuring food safety, and diagnosing diseases. However, traditional assay techniques for KAN rely on bulky instruments and complicated operations with unsatisfactory detection limits.

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Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a life-threatening disease with a short course and a high mortality rate. However, it is still a great challenge to achieve the on-site diagnosis of this disease within minutes, meaning there is an urgent need to develop an efficient technology for realizing the rapid diagnosis and early warning of AMI in clinical emergencies. In this study, an ultrasensitive electrochemical aptasensor based on an extended-gate ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (EGISFET) was designed to achieve the quantitative assay of cardiac troponin I (cTnI), which is a highly sensitive and specific biomarker of AMI, within only 5 min.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers developed a high-performance metal-organic framework (MOF) membrane with enhanced molecular separation capabilities, overcoming challenges related to defects and water stability during its fabrication.
  • The process involved a confined-coordination strategy that controlled the growth rate of MOF crystals, leading to a defect-free structure and allowing for precise molecular sieving.
  • The resulting Zr-MOF membrane demonstrated significantly improved separation efficiencies, with high permeance and selectivity for gases and salts, outperforming existing membrane technologies.
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In clinical settings, saliva has been established as a straightforward, noninvasive medium for diagnosing periodontitis. However, the precise diagnosis is often hampered by the absence of a specialized analyzer capable of detecting low concentrations of biomarkers typically found in saliva. In this study, we present a noninvasive, on-site screen-printed biomicrochip specifically engineered for the precise and sensitive quantification of lactate concentrations in saliva, a critical biomarker in the diagnosis of periodontitis.

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Since the outbreak of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19), this pandemic has caused severe death and infection worldwide. Owing to its strong infectivity, long incubation period, and nonspecific symptoms, the early diagnosis is essential to reduce risk of the severe illness. The electrochemical biosensor, as a fast and sensitive technique for quantitative analysis of body fluids, has been widely studied to diagnose different biomarkers caused at different infective stages of COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2).

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Amyloid beta-protein (AβAβ) is a main hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and a low amount of Aβ protein accumulation appears to be a potential marker for AD. Here, an electrochemical DNA biosensor based on polyamide/polyaniline carbon nanotubes (PA/PANI-CNTs) is developed with the aim of diagnosing AD early using a simple, low-cost, and accessible method to rapidly detect Aβ42 in human blood. Electrospun PA nanofibers served as the skeleton for the successive in situ deposition of PANI and CNTs, which contribute both high conductivity and abundant binding sites for the Aβ42 aptamers.

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The detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in peripheral blood is a novel and accurate technique for the early diagnosis of cancers. However, this method is challenging because of the need for high collection efficiency due to the ultralow content and similar size of CTCs compared with other blood cells. To address the aforementioned issue, we proposed a homoporous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane and its microfilter device to perform the ultrafast isolation and identification of CTCs directly from peripheral blood without any labeling treatment.

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Owing to the high mortality and strong infection ability of COVID-19, the early rapid diagnosis is essential to reduce the risk of severe symptoms and the loss of lung function. In clinic, the commonly used detection methods, including the computed tomography (CT) and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), are often time-consuming with bulky instruments, which normally require more than one hour to report the results. To shorten the analytical period for testing the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2), we proposed an ultrafast and ultrasensitive DNA sensors to achieve an accurate determination of the DNA sequence by the RNA reverse transcription (rtDNA) of the SARS-CoV-2.

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Non-enzymatic electrochemical sensors that use functional materials to directly catalyze glucose have shown great promise in diabetes management, food control, and bioprocess inspection owing to the advantages of high sensitivity, long-term stability, and low cost. Recently, in order to produce enhanced electrochemical behavior, significant efforts have been devoted to the preparation of functional materials with regular nanostructure, as it provides high specific surface area and well-defined strong active sites for electrochemical sensing. However, the structure-performance correlation in this field has not been reviewed thoroughly in the literature.

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Mixed-matrix membranes (MMMs) that combine processable polymer with more permeable and selective filler have potential for molecular separation, but it remains difficult to control their interfacial compatibility and achieve ultrathin selective layers during processing, particularly at high filler loading. We present a solid-solvent processing strategy to fabricate an ultrathin MMM (thickness less than 100 nanometers) with filler loading up to 80 volume %. We used polymer as a solid solvent to dissolve metal salts to form an ultrathin precursor layer, which immobilizes the metal salt and regulates its conversion to a metal-organic framework (MOF) and provides adhesion to the MOF in the matrix.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Electrochemical biosensors, which detect cancer biomarkers in blood, offer advantages like low invasiveness, fast diagnosis, and cost-effectiveness, but face challenges in balancing sensitivity and selectivity.
  • * The review examines various advanced electrochemical biosensors, their methods, strengths and weaknesses, and discusses the role of nanomaterials in enhancing detection, while also addressing current challenges and future developments in this field.
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Sucrose is one of the most applied carbon sources in the fermentation process, and it directly determines the microbial metabolism with its concentration fluctuation. Meanwhile, sucrose also plays a key role of a protective agent in the production of biological vaccines, especially in the new mRNA vaccines for curing COVID-19. However, rapid and precise detection of sucrose is always desired but unrealized in industrial fermentation and synthetic biology research.

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With the rapid development of industrial society, phenolic pollutants already identified in water are severe threats to human health. Traditional detection techniques like chromatography are poor in the ability of cost-effectiveness and on-site detection. In recent years, electrochemical enzymatic biosensors have attracted increasing attention for use in the recognition of phenolic compounds, which is considered an effective strategy for the product transfer of portable analytical devices.

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Since the global outbreak of COVID-19, membrane technology for clinical treatments, including extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and protective masks and clothing, has attracted intense research attention for its irreplaceable abilities. Membrane research and applications are now playing an increasingly important role in various fields of life science. In addition to intrinsic properties such as size sieving, dissolution and diffusion, membranes are often endowed with additional functions as cell scaffolds, catalysts or sensors to satisfy the specific requirements of different clinical applications.

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Mercury ion (Hg) is a strong toxic heavy ion that causes severe damages to the environment and readily accumulates in the food chain. However, it remains a major challenge to realize a sensitive and precise recognition of Hg with a trace concentration for early identifying the pollution source. In this work, a novel electrochemical aptasensor was designed to achieve an ultrasensitive and quantitative detection of trace Hg, relying on an urchin-like architecture of Cu@carbon nanoneedles (Cu@CNNs) as the electroactive probe.

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Allura red (AR) is a member of azo dyes is commonly used as an additive in foods and soft drinks. However, due to the special harm of the azo structure to the human body, the dosage control of AR becomes particularly necessary. The present detection methods are time-consuming, expensive and complicated.

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Cardiac troponin I (cTnI) is an efficient and specific biomarker for the accurate diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), one of the diseases with the highest mortality worldwide. Due to the short course and high fatality of this disease, a rapid, accurate and portable device for quantitative detection is urgently needed for early diagnosis and treatment. In this work, we designed a handheld device based on a dual-gate ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET) for early and accurate warning of AMI through cTnI detection.

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