Hydrophobin‐Coated Solid Fluorinated Nanoparticles for 19F‐MRI

In recent years, fluorine-magnetic resonance imaging (19F-MRI) has emergedas a promising diagnostic technique, complementary to traditional protonmagnetic resonance imaging (1H-MRI) and easily translatable for clinical use,providing in-depth in vivo quantification without the use of radioactive agents.This creates a need for the development of appropriate delivery systems forhighly omniphobic fluorinated probes. The use of the film-forming proteinhydrophobin (HFBII) represents a sustainable and simple method to invertthe philicity of fluorinated surfaces. Here, the ability of HFBII to form a rigidprotein monolayer on superfluorinated coatings rendering them hydrophilicis shown, a property that is also retained in biological environment. Thisapproach is then translated to directly disperse a solid superfluorinated 19F-MRIprobe, PERFECTA, in aqueous solution through the formation of core-shellhydrophobin stabilized PERFECTA nanoparticles (NPs). The obtained NPs arefully characterized in terms of morphology, magnetic properties, colloidal sta-bility, protein corona formation, cellular viability, and imaging performance.