This work addresses the current need for novel sensitive, robust, and selective diagnostic tools for non- invasive in vivo imaging, which are able to improve the medical practice through earlier diagnosis of disease, implementation of targeted therapies, and localization of diseased tissues, etc. Our approach is based on the development of new fluorinated probes enabling 19F-MRI, as a complementary tool, to be coupled with other diagnostic imaging techniques such as 1H-MRI, Raman and fluorescence imaging, in order to overcome their present shortcomings, particularly in terms of sensitivity. 19F-MRI has emerged as one of the most promising diagnostic tools providing hot spot imaging. This talk reports about a unique fluorinated imaging agent (PER- FECTA) bearing 36 equivalent 19F atoms and therefore showing a single, intense resonance peak. Biocom- patible nanoformulations of PERFECTA have demonstrated excellent cellular compatibility and spectral prop- erties (relaxation times and sensitivity) adequate for in vivo 19F-MRI use are shown [1-2]. In this presentation PERFECTA ability to work as multiscale and multimodal probe will be also shown [3]. Moreover, the effect of fluorination using PERFECTA derivatives on the self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules will be shown also in term of their biological interactions.

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[2] Chirizzi C. et al. Radiology 2019, 291, 351
[3] Chirizzi C. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 31, 12253