Xiujun Li

University of Texas at El Paso | UTEP · Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

A disposable paper-based glucose biosensor with direct electron transfer (DET) of glucose oxidase (GOX) was developed through simple covalent immobilization of GOX on a carbon electrode surface using zero-length cross-linkers. This glucose biosensor exhibited a high electron transfer rate (ks, 3.363 s−1) as well as good affinity (km, 0.03 mM) for G...

Biosensors that sense the concentration of a specified target and produce a specific signal output have become important technology for biological analysis. Recently, intelligent biosensors have received great interest due to their adaptability to meet sophisticated demands. Advances in developing standard modules and carriers in synthetic biology...

A low‐cost microfluidic platform integrated with a flexible heater was developed for in situ temperature‐dependent spectroscopic measurement at the point of care. After verifying the system by comparing on‐chip spectroscopic measurement of methylene blue with the conventional spectroscopy, we demonstrated its applications in temperature‐dependent a...

Bacterial meningitis, an infection of the membranes (meninges) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) surrounding the brain and spinal cord, is one of the major causes of death and disability worldwide. Higher case-fatality rates and short survival times have been reported in developing countries. Hence, a quick, straightforward, and low-cost approach is in...

Acephate is an organophosphorus pesticide (OP) that is widely used to control insects in agricultural fields such as in vegetables and fruits. Toxic OPs can enter human and animal bodies and eventually lead to chronic or acute poisoning. However, traditional enzyme inhibition and colorimetric methods for OPs detection usually require complicated de...

Microfluidic technology provides a portable, cost-effective, and versatile tool for point-of-care (POC) bioanalysis because of its associated advantages such as fast analysis, low volumes of reagent consumption, and high portability. Along with microfluidics, the application of nanomaterials in biosensing has attracted lots of attention due to thei...

A new poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) sponge-supported nanocatalysis platform on a continuous-flow microfluidic multireactor device was constructed for high-efficiency and high-reusability catalytic degradation of environmental pollutants. PVA sponge-supported metal nanoparticle catalysts (MNPs/PVA) were prepared by a simple improved impregnation self-as...

We report the synthesis and characterization of a variety of nickel molybdenum disulfide (NiMoS2) materials as efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts for both the hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution reactions (HER and OER, respectively). These catalysts were obtained from pretreated ammonium tetrathiomolybdate (ATM) using ethylenediamine (EDA)...

Cancer immunotherapy has achieved remarkable success over the past decade by modulating patients’ own immune systems and unleashing pre-existing immunity. However, only a minority of cancer patients across different cancer types are able to benefit from immunotherapy treatment; moreover, among those small portions of patients with response, intrins...

Widely used water treatment methods are based on chemicals that leave residual unwanted impurities, instigating long-term health impacts. Hence, functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have been used to fill those gabs and are commonly used for metallic adsorption in contaminated waters. High surface to volume ratio of those MNPs allows for a...

Paper-based microfluidic devices have undergone rapid development and offered a promising low-cost platform for disease diagnostics in poor-resource areas. Recently, paper-hybrid microfluidic devices have attracted much attention and been applied in various low-cost point-of-care testings, due to multiple merits derived from both paper and other su...

Flow cytometry is an essential technique in biomedical discovery for cell counting, cell sorting, and biomarker detection. In vivo flow cytometers based on one-photon or two-photon excited fluorescence have been developed for over a decade. One drawback of the laser beam scanning two-photon flow cytometer is that the two-photon excitation volume is...

A gold nanoparticle (AuNP) aggregation-induced colorimetric aptasensing method for quantitative detection of sulfadimethoxine (SDM) with a smartphone was developed. AuNPs were complexed with aptamers which protected AuNPs from aggregating in high-concentration salt solutions. In the presence of SDM, SDM bound with the aptamer on the surface of AuNP...

Hybrid microfluidic systems that are composed of multiple different types of substrates have been recognized as a versatile and superior platform, which can draw benefits from different substrates while avoiding their limitations. This review article introduces the recent innovations of different types of low-cost hybrid microfluidic devices, parti...

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is widely used for the detection of disease biomarkers. However, it utilizes time-consuming procedures and expensive instruments, making it infeasible for point-of-care (POC) analysis especially in resource-limited settings. In this work, a multicolorimetric ELISA biosensor integrated on a paper/polymer hyb...

p>The volumetric bar-chart microfluidic chips (V-Chips) driven by chemical reaction-generated gas provide a promising platform for point-of-care (POC) visual biomarker quantitation. However, multiple limitations are encountered in conventional V-Chips, such as costly and complex chip fabrication, complicated assembly, and imprecise controllability...

Efficient drug delivery plays a crucial role in disease treatment and remains an important challenge in medicine. Recent advances in new materials, microfabrication process, and automation have offered great opportunities to develop controlled release systems for drug delivery. This chapter will focus on two kinds of delivery platforms: micro/nanof...

Stem cells are the basic building blocks of the human body; they can be differentiated into almost any type of cell found in our body. However, because of their unique properties, including heterogeneity and sensitivity to their niche environment, stem cells and their mechanisms are not completely understood. Traditional technologies have provided...

This chapter discusses issues relating to the processing of biological cells in microfluidic channels and the different techniques available to manipulate cells in microfluidic systems. Broadly classified into electrical, hydrodynamic, optical, magnetic, and acoustic mechanisms, the forces acting on micrometer-sized particles and current technologi...

Low-cost easy-to-use paper testing devices such as strips for pH, pregnancy, or diabetes testing have been commercially available for years. Recently, with advances from microfluidics, researchers have enhanced these tools and developed microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (μPADs). These “lab-on-paper” are capable of, inexpensively, achievin...

The photothermal biosensing principle is of increasing interest for point-of-care detection, but has rarely been applied in portable analytical devices in a lab-on-a-chip format. Herein, a photothermally responsive poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)/paper hybrid disk (PT-Disk) was developed as a novel photothermal immunoassay device with the integra...

Conventional colorimetric enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is a time-consuming laboratory assay that is not very sensitive and consumes a large amount of samples. Herein, the development of a reusable, cost-effective, and eco-friendly poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)/paper hybrid plug-and-play (PnP) device for high-sensitivity immunoassay...

As a class of crystalline porous materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted increasing attention. Due to the nanoscale framework structure, adjustable pore size, large specific surface area, and good chemical stability, MOFs have been applied widely in many fields such as biosensors, biomedicine, electrocatalysis, energy storage and...

Tuberculosis (TB), one of the deadliest infectious diseases, is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and remains a public health problem nowadays. Conventional MTB DNA detection methods require sophisticated infrastructure and well-trained personnel, which leads to increasing complexity and high cost for diagnostics and limits their wide acce...

Nb doped MnCe0.2Ox complex oxides catalysts prepared via a homogeneous precipitation method were investigated for synergistic catalytic removal NOx and chlorobenzene (CB) at low temperatures. The MnNb0.4Ce0.2Ox catalyst with a molar ratio of Nb/Mn=0.4 exhibited excellent activity and the NOx and CB removal efficiency reached 94.5% and 96% at 220 °C...

A low-cost, sensitive, and disposable paper-based immunosensor for instrument-free colorimetric detection of a pancreatic cancer biomarker PEAK1 was reported for the first time by capitalizing the catalytic properties of gold...

The requirement of on-demand microfluidic pumps and instrument-free readout methods remains major challenges for the development of microfluidics. Herein, a new type of microfluidic platform, an on-demand photothermal microfluidic pumping platform, has been developed using the on-chip nanomaterial-mediated photothermal effect as the novel and remot...

Glass slides have been widely used for DNA immobilization in DNA microarray and numerous bioassays for decades, whereas they are faced with limitations of low probe density, time-consuming modification steps, and expensive instruments. In this work, a simple one-step surface modification method using 3-aminopropyl trimethoxysilane (APTMS) has been...

Although noble metal nanocatalysts show superior performance to conventional catalysts, they can be problematic when balancing catalytic efficiency and reusability. In order to address this dilemma, we for the first...

A simple, low-cost, and universal gold nanoparticle (AuNP) aggregation-induced photothermal biosensing platform has been developed for the first time and applied for the visual quantitative genetic detection using a common thermometer. By exploiting the photothermal effect of target-induced gold nanoparticle aggregation, visual quantitative biochem...

A novel and recoverable platform of polyurethane (PU) sponge-supported Au nanoparticle catalyst was obtained by a water-based in-situ preparation process. The structure, chemical, and morphology properties of this platform were characterized by XRD, TGA, SEM, FT-IR, and XPS. The Au/PU sponge platform exhibited excellent catalytic performances in ca...

Due to the lack of specific early detection methods for pancreatic cancer, it usually goes undetected until it is advanced. By employing paper-based electrodes (PPEs), herein we for the first time developed a disposable low-cost paper-based immunosensor for rapid early quantitative detection of pancreatic cancer with a new biomarker, pseudopodium-e...

A novel porous ceramic sheet supported nickel particles reactor was obtained by an in-situ preparation method. This reactor was then used to investigate continuous-flow catalysis of nitroaromatic compounds and methyl orange. The details of the structure and morphology were characterized by XRD, SEM, XPS, Raman, element mapping, mercury intrusion me...

This chapter focuses on recent advances of point‐of‐care (POC) detection of infectious diseases using paper‐based microfluidic platforms, more specifically fully paper‐based and paper hybrid microfluidic platforms, especially in resource‐limited settings. It introduces the fabrication techniques of fully paper‐based and its hybrid microfluidic plat...

The increasingly intimate bond connecting soft actuation devices and emerging biomedical applications is triggering the development of novel materials with superb biocompatibility and a sensitive actuation capability that can reliably function as bio-use-oriented actuators in a human-friendly manner. Stimulus-responsive hydrogels are biocompatible...

The application of novel sensing principles in microfluidic devices opens up new possibilities for the development of point-of-care testing (POCT). Herein, the photothermal sensing principle is introduced in microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (μPADs) to develop a photothermal microfluidic sensing platform using near-infrared (NIR) laser-dr...

Intelligent contactless microfluidic pumping strategies have been increasingly desirable in operation of lab-on-a-chip devices. Herein, we present a photothermal microfluidic pumping strategy for on-chip multiplexed cargo transport in a contactless and spatiotemporally controllable fashion, based on the application of near-infrared laser-driven pho...

As a key virulence factor of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, EsxA is not only involved in phagosome rupture, but also functions in stimulation of immune responses in macrophages. Here, we report thatmiR-148a is down-regulated in the macrophages infected with Mycobacterium marinum (Mm). Using the knockout strain Mm∆EsxA/B, recombinant EsxA, EsxB and Esx...

Understanding molecular, cellular, genetic and functional heterogeneity of tumors at the single-cell level has become a major challenge for cancer research. The microfluidic technique has emerged as an important tool that offers advantages in analyzing single-cells with the capability to integrate time-consuming and labor-intensive experimental pro...

Upconversion nanoparticle-based lateral flow assays (UCNP-LFAs) have attracted significant attention in point-of-care testing (POCT) applications, due to the long-term photostability and enhanced signal-to-background noise ratio. The existing UCNP-LFAs generally require peripheral equipment for exciting fluorescent signals and reading out fluoresce...

Whooping cough also called Pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory infection that affects all age populations. Given recent pertussis outbreaks, there is an urgent need for a point-of-care (POC) device for rapid diagnosis of pertussis. Herein, we report a low-cost microfluidic POC device integrated with loop-mediated isothermal amplification (...

Background: Pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis). The infection is difficult to diagnose especially in underserved or resource-limited areas. We developed a low-cost and instrument-free diagnostic method for rapid and accurate detection of B. pertussis on a point-of-care (...

Uncontrolled bleeding is an important cause of military and civilian casualties. GO has received more attention in the field of hemostasis. However, pure GO has various limitation in application due to its potential thrombosis, hemolytic and cytotoxicity. Herein, we present a simple, rapid and low-cost method to combine GO and natural polysaccharid...

We developed a smartphone‐based on‐site nucleic acid testing platform that can image and analyze lateral flow nucleic acid assays at point‐of‐care settings. An inexpensive add‐on was devised to run lateral flow assays while providing homogeneous ambient light for imaging. In addition, an Android app with a user‐friendly interface was developed for...

A portable Multiplexed Bar-chart SpinChip (MB-SpinChip) integrated with nanoparticle-mediated magnetic aptasensors was developed for visual quantitative instrument-free detection of multiple pathogens. This versatile multiplexed SpinChip combines aptamer specific recognition and nanoparticle-catalyzed pressure amplification to achieve a sample-to-a...

The exploration of new physical and chemical properties of materials and their innovative application in different fields are of great importance to advance analytical chemistry, material science, and other important fields. Herein, we, for the first time, discovered the photothermal effect of an iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs)-mediated TMB (3,3’,5,...

A series of TiO2 catalyst carriers with ceria additives were prepared by a precipitation method and tested for selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO by NH3. These samples were characterized by XRD, N2-BET, NH3-TPD, H2-TPR, TEM, XPS and in situ DRIFTS, respectively. Results showed that the appropriate addition of ceria can enhance the catalytic...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a serious public health problem, which can be transmitted through various routes (e.g., blood donation) and cause hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. Hence, it is necessary to do diagnostic screening for high-risk HBV patients in these transmission routes. Nowadays, protein-based technologies have been...

Conventional systematically-administered drugs distribute evenly throughout the body, get degraded and excreted rapidly while crossing many biological barriers, leaving minimum amounts of the drugs at pathological sites. Controlled drug delivery aims to deliver drugs to the target sites at desired rates and time, thus enhancing the drug efficacy, p...

Clinically, blood sample analysis has been widely used for health monitoring. In hospitals, arterial and venous blood are utilized to detect various disease biomarkers. However, collection methods are invasive, painful, may result in injury and contamination, and skilled workers are required, making these methods unsuitable for use in a resource-li...

A paper/ poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) hybrid CD-like microfluidic SpinChip integrated with DNA probe-functionalized graphene oxide (GO) nanosensors was developed for multiplex quantitative LAMP detection (mqLAMP). This approach can simply and effectively address a major challenging problem of multiplexing in current LAMP methods.

Conventional methods for extraction of DNA are expensive, time-consuming and tedious. To overcome these limitations, a paper-based DNA extraction device was developed that incorporates sponge-based buffer storage, a paper-based valve and channels of different length to autonomously direct the reagent and sample to the Fusion 5 disk for DNA capturin...

Microfluidic lab-on-a-chip provides a new platform with unique advantages to mimic complex physiological microenvironments in vivo and has been increasingly exploited to stem cell research. In this review, we highlight recent advances of microfluidic devices for stem cell culture and differentiation toward the development of organ-on-a-chip, especi...

Droplet merging and splitting are important droplet manipulations in droplet-based microfluidics. However, the fundamental flow behaviors of droplets were not systematically studied. Hence, we designed two different microstructures to achieve droplet merging and splitting respectively, and quantitatively compared different flow dynamics in differen...

To eliminate nitrogen oxides (NOx), a series of highly ordered mesoporous WO3(χ)-CeO2 nanomaterials (χ represents the mole ratio of W/Ce) were synthesized by using KIT-6 as a hard template, which was used for selective catalytic reduction (SCR) to remove NOx with NH3 at low temperatures. Moreover, the nanomaterials were characterized by TEM, XRD, R...

EsxA is required for virulence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and plays an essential role in phagosome rupture and translocation to the cytosol of macrophages. Recent biochemical studies have demonstrated that EsxA is a membrane-permeabilizing protein. However, evidence that link EsxA membrane-permeabilizing activity to Mtb cytosolic transloca...

Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is one of the most widely used laboratory disease diagnosis methods. However, performing ELISA in low-resource settings is limited by long incubation time, large volumes of precious reagents, and well-equipped laboratories. Herein, we developed a simple, miniaturized paper/PMMA (poly(methyl methacrylate)) h...

Therapeutic drugs administered systematically are evenly distributed to the whole body through blood circulation and have to cross many biological barriers before reaching the pathological site. Conventional drug delivery may make drugs inactive or reduce their potency as they may be hydrolyzed or degraded enzymatically and are rapidly excreted thr...

A cost-effective b[combining low line]a[combining low line]ttery-powered s[combining low line]pectrophotometric s[combining low line]ystem (BASS) was developed for quantitative point-of-care (POC) analysis on a microfluidic chip. By using methylene blue as a model analyte, we first compared the performance of the BASS with a commercial spectrophoto...

The development of new sensitive, cost-effective and user-friendly colorimetric bioassays is in increasing demand to meet the requirement of modern clinical diagnostics and field detection. Herein, a novel iron oxide-to-Prussian blue (PB) nanoparticle (NP) conversion strategy was developed and applied to sensitive colorimetric immunosensing of canc...

Therapeutic drugs administered systematically are evenly distributed to the whole body through blood circulation and have to cross many biological barriers before reaching the pathological site. Conventional drug delivery may make drugs inactive or reduce their potency as they may be hydrolyzed or degraded enzymatically and are rapidly excreted thr...

We have developed a new biomolecular quantitation method, nanoparticle-mediated photothermal bioassay, using a common thermometer as the signal reader. Using immunoassay as a proof of concept, iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs) captured in the sandwich-type assay system are transformed into a near-infrared (NIR) laser-driven photothermal agent, Prussia...

Taking advantage of the properties of the high surface-area-to-volume ratio of microfluidic droplets, we developed an innovative interfacial nanosensing strategy based on aptamer-functionalized graphene oxide nanosensors in microfluidic droplets for the high-sensitivity one-step detection of 17β-estradiol and other low-solubility molecules, with th...

Early and timely detection of disease biomarkers can prevent the spread of infectious diseases, and drastically decrease the death rate of people suffering from different diseases such as cancer and infectious diseases. Because conventional diagnostic methods have limited application in low-resource settings due to the use of bulky and expensive in...

Low-cost assays have broad applications ranging from human health diagnostics and food safety inspection to environmental analysis. Hence, low-cost assays are especially attractive for rural areas and developing countries, where financial resources are limited. Recently, paper-based microfluidic devices have emerged as a low-cost platform which gre...

Point-of-care (POC) diagnostics is playing an increasingly important role in public health, environmental monitoring, and food safety analysis. Smartphones, alone or in conjunction with add-on devices, have shown great capability of data collection, analysis, display, and transmission, making them popular in POC diagnostics. In this article, the st...