Your Vagina is a Hot Wet Cave of Drugs

New research shows that your vagina — YES THAT ONE — contains a complicated forest of bacteria that produces molecules that could possibly be used to make useful pharmaceuticals. Vaginas: is there anything they can’t do?

The study, published in this week’s issue of Cell (check out the swimsuit issue; it’s insane), indicates that our Baby Chutes/Love Holes actually manufacture substances that could be used to make medicine for other people.

“Many [microbes] can make drugs like those we’re already taking or evaluating in clinical trials,” says study coauthor Mohamed Donia, a biochemist who recently moved from the University of California, San Francisco to Princeton University. One of the drug candidates Donia and his colleagues discovered is a new antibiotic produced by vaginal bacteria to fight off pathogens.

I’m so proud of my vagina today that I’m going to buy it a new pair of school shoes.