Publications

A Programmable Electrochemical Y-Shaped DNA Scaffold Sensor for the Single-Step Detection of Antibodies and Proteins in Untreated Biological Fluids

Andrea Idili, Andrea Bonini, Claudio Parolo, Ruslán Alvarez Diduk, Fabio Di Francesco, Arben Merkoçi. Advanced Functional Materials
Proteins and antibodies are key biomarkers for diagnosing and monitoring specific medical conditions. Currently, gold standard techniques used for their quantification require laborious multi-step procedures, involving high costs and slow response times. It is possible to overcome these limitations by exploiting the chemistry and...

ATP Sensing Paper with Smartphone Bioluminescence-Based Detection

Maria Maddalena Calabretta, Ruslan Alvarez Diduk, Elisa Michelini & Arben Merkoçi.
Adenosine-5′-triphosphate (ATP) is the primary energy carrier in all living organisms, and its detection in living cells represents a well-established approach. ATP-driven bioluminescence (BL) relying on the D-luciferin-luciferase reaction is a bioanalytical tool widely employed for monitoring hygiene and microbial contamination...

Graphene Nanobeacons with High-Affinity Pockets for Combined, Selective, and Effective Decontamination and Reagentless Detection of Heavy Metals

David Panáček, Lukáš Zdražil, Michal Langer, Veronika Šedajová, Zdeněk Baďura, Georgio Zoppellaro, Qiuyue Yang, Emily P. Nguyen, Ruslan Álvarez Diduk, Vítězslav Hrubý, Jan Kolařík, Nikolaos Chalmpes, Athanasios B. Bourlinos, Radek Zbořil, Arben Merkoçi, Aristides Bakandritsos, Michal Otyepka. Small
Access to clean water for drinking, sanitation, and irrigation is a major sustainable development goal of the United Nations. Thus, technologies for cleaning water and quality-monitoring must become widely accessible and of low-cost, while being effective, selective, sustainable, and eco-friendly. To meet this challenge, hetero-bifunctional...

Development of a Heavy Metal Sensing Boat for Automatic Analysis in Natural Waters Utilizing Anodic Stripping Voltammetry

Qiuyue Yang, Bhawna Nagar, Ruslán Alvarez Diduk, Marc Balsells, Alessandro Farinelli, Domenico Bloisi, Lorenzo Proia, Carmen Espinosa, Marc Ordeix, Thorsten Knutz, Elisabetta De Vito-Francesco, Roza Allabashi, and Arben Merkoçi. ACS EST Water
Determination of the levels of heavy metal ions would support assessment of sources and pathways of water pollution. However, traditional spatial assessment by manual sampling and off-site detection in the laboratory is expensive and time-consuming and requires trained personnel. Aiming to fill the gap between on-site automatic approaches...

Wearable and fully printed microfluidic nanosensor for sweat rate, conductivity, and copper detection with healthcare applications

Qiuyue Yang, Giulio Rosati, Vernalyn Abarintos, Miguel Angel Aroca, Johann F. Osma, Arben Merkoçi. Biosensors and Bioelectronics
Wearables are becoming pervasive in our society, but they are still mainly based on physical sensors with just few optical and electrochemical exceptions. Sweat, amongst other body fluids, is easily and non-invasively accessible, abundant, and relatively poor of interfering species. The biomarkers of interest in sweat space from...

Selection and characterisation of bioreceptors to develop nanoparticle-based lateral-flow immunoassays in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak

Liming Hu, Enric Calucho, Celia Fuentes-Chust, Claudio Parolo, Andrea Idili, Ruslan Álvarez Diduk, Lourdes Rivas, Arben Merkoçi. Lab on a Chip
This manuscript aims at raising the attention of the scientific community to the need for better characterised bioreceptors for fast development of point-of-care diagnostic devices able to support mass frequency testing. Particularly, we present the difficulties encountered in finding suitable antibodies for the development of a...

Integrating gold nanoclusters, folic acid and reduced graphene oxide for nanosensing of glutathione based on “turn-off” fluorescence

Xin Yi Wong, Daniel Quesada-González, Sivakumar Manickam, Siu Yee New, Kasturi Muthoosamy, Arben Merkoçi. Scientific Reports
Glutathione (GSH) is a useful biomarker in the development, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. However, most of the reported GSH biosensors are expensive, time-consuming and often require complex sample treatment, which limit its biological applications. Herein, a nanobiosensor for the detection of GSH using folic acid-functionalized...

Nanodiagnostics to Face SARS-CoV-2 and Future Pandemics: From an Idea to the Market and Beyond

Giulio Rosati, Andrea Idili, Claudio Parolo, Celia Fuentes-Chust, Enric Calucho, Liming Hu, Cecilia de Carvalho Castro e Silva, Lourdes Rivas, Emily P. Nguyen, José F. Bergua, Ruslan Álvarez Diduk, José Muñoz, Christophe Junot, Oriol Penon, Dominique Monferrer, Emmanuel Delamarche, and Arben Merkoçi. ACS Nano
The COVID-19 pandemic made clear how our society requires quickly available tools to address emerging healthcare issues. Diagnostic assays and devices are used every day to screen for COVID-19 positive patients, with the aim to decide the appropriate treatment and containment measures. In this context, we would have expected to see...

Attomolar analyte sensing techniques (AttoSens): a review on a decade of progress on chemical and biosensing nanoplatforms

Sruthi Prasood Usha, Hariharan Manoharan, Rehan Deshmukh, Ruslan Álvarez Diduk, Enric Calucho, Arben Merkoçi . Chemical Society Reviews
Detecting the ultra-low abundance of analytes in real-life samples, such as biological fluids, water, soil, and food, requires the design and development of high-performance biosensing modalities. The breakthrough efforts from the scientific community have led to the realization of sensing technologies that measure the analyte’s...

Label-free and reagentless electrochemical genosensor based on graphene acid for meat adulteration detection

José MR Flauzino, Emily P Nguyen, Qiuyue Yang, Giulio Rosati, David Panáček, Ana G Brito-Madurro, João M Madurro, Aristides Bakandritsos, Michal Otyepka, Arben Merkoçi. Biosensors and Bioelectronics
With the increased demand for beef in emerging markets, the development of quality-control diagnostics that are fast, cheap and easy to handle is essential. Especially where beef must be free from pork residues, due to religious, cultural or allergic reasons, the availability of such diagnostic tools is crucial. In this work, we...