Researchers at Imperial College London and the Laboratoire de chimie de la matière condensée de Paris (CNRS/Collège de France/UPMC)1 have designed and developed hybrid gold-silica nanoparticles, which are turning out to be genuine therapeutic “Swiss Army knives”. Tested in mice and on cultured human cells, they make it possible to combine two forms of tumor treatment and three imaging techniques. They notably have a greater drug loading and delivery capacity than carriers currently on the market, which opens interesting perspectives for cancer research. The results were published in PNAS on February 4, 2015.