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A strategy for accurate detection of glucose in human serum and whole blood based on an upconversion nanoparticles-polydopamine nanosystem

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Abstract

The accurate detection of blood glucose is of critical importance in the diagnosis and management of diabetes and its complications. Herein, we report a novel strategy based on an upconversion nanoparticles-polydopamine (UCNPs-PDA) nanosystem for the accurate detection of glucose in human serum and whole blood through a simple blending of test samples with ligand-free UCNPs, dopamine, and glucose oxidase (GOx). Owing to the high affinity of lanthanide ions exposed on the surface of ligand-free UCNPs, dopamine monomers could spontaneously attach to the UCNPs and further polymerize to form a PDA shell, resulting in a remarkable upconversion luminescence (UCL) quenching (97.4%) of UCNPs under 980-nm excitation. Such UCL quenching can be effectively inhibited by H2O2 produced from the GOx/glucose enzymatic reaction, thus enabling the detection of H2O2 or glucose based on the UCL quenching/inhibition bioassay. Owing to the highly sensitive UCL response and background-free interference of the UCNPs-PDA nanosystem, we achieved a sensitive, selective, and high-throughput bioassay for glucose in human serum and whole blood, thereby revealing the great potential of the UCNPs-PDA nanosystem for the accurate detection of blood glucose or other H2O2-generated biomolecules in clinical bioassays.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2014CB845605), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Nos. U1305244, 21325104, 51402294 and 21501180), the CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams, Strategic Priority Research Program of the CAS (Nos. XDA09030307 and XDB20000000), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association (No. 2016277) and the Chunmiao Project of Haixi Institute of the CAS (No. CMZX-2016-002), and the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (Nos. 2015J05116, 2017J05095, 2017J01105 and 2017I0018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Design and Assembly of Functional Nanostructures, and Fujian Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, 350002, China

    Yan Liu, Datao Tu, Wei Zheng, Lianyu Lu, Wenwu You, Shanyong Zhou, Ping Huang, Renfu Li & Xueyuan Chen

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yan Liu, Wenwu You & Xueyuan Chen

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  1. Yan Liu
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  2. Datao Tu
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  3. Wei Zheng
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  4. Lianyu Lu
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  5. Wenwu You
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  7. Ping Huang
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  8. Renfu Li
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  9. Xueyuan Chen
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Correspondence to Wei Zheng or Xueyuan Chen.

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12274_2017_1721_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

A strategy for accurate detection of glucose in human serum and whole blood based on an upconversion nanoparticles-polydopamine nanosystem

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Liu, Y., Tu, D., Zheng, W. et al. A strategy for accurate detection of glucose in human serum and whole blood based on an upconversion nanoparticles-polydopamine nanosystem. Nano Res. 11, 3164–3174 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1721-1

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