U.S. researchers have successfully genetically modified a hookworm to deliver a therapeutic drug. They say hookworms may be the ideal delivery mechanism for long-term drug release.

"The hookworm has spent millions of years perfecting how to assure long-term survival inside a human host and how to get molecules out of its body and into ours," said senior author Makedonka Mitreva, Ph.D., the Gordon R. Miller Professor at the John T. Milliken Department of Medicine's Division of Infectious Diseases at WashU Medicine. "We asked: What if we could add one more molecule to the roughly 1,000 things the worm already secretes, something therapeutically useful to people? This study shows that it's not just a concept. It works."

We're already in symbiosis with bacteria. The human microbiome plays a crucial role in health, digestion, immunity, and even brain function. So it's not that odd that a much larger creature could play a symbiotic role, too.

So if this ever gets commercially developed, they would probably have more success marketing it as your own personal biological 3-D printer than just calling it a hookworm.