JUST one imitation horse was enough to conquer Troy, but it takes two waves of “Trojan” cell fragments to destroy drug-resistant tumours in mice. The first wave releases RNA to disrupt drug resistance, making the tumours vulnerable, and the second delivers a fatal dose of chemotherapy.
Himanshu Brahmbhatt and Jennifer MacDiarmid of the company in Sydney, Australia, had already coaxed bacteria such as E. coli into dividing at their ends, rather than in the middle. This way they produce tiny buds of cytoplasm devoid of chromosomes and other organelles. After washing these “minicells” clear of bacterial toxins, the…
