Alex Loukas has been studying the health properties of intestinal worms for more than a decade but says his team was surprised to hear from the United States Department of Defence when it got in touch recently.
The US government was interested in working with Professor Loukas and James Cook University to improve troops' protection against biological and chemical weapons.
It has granted the university's Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine $US2.5 million, across five years, to create parasitic worms that can internally protect personnel through constant secretion of antibodies.
Professor Loukas says the project is at its very start, but early evidence suggests a process of genetic engineering could be possible.
'Tiny factories' to work inside troops Professor Loukas said the project would be made possible through a recently developed genetic modification technology called CRISPR-Cas9.
"You can introduce a foreign gene into an organism's genome, or you can knock out a gene using this technology and colleagues of ours in the US have recently applied this to parasitic worms," he said.
Professor Loukas said the genetically modified parasites would be able to secrete antibodies that are already well known.
"There are various antibodies that are available in the public domain that have been shown to have anti-anthrax properties or anti-organophosphate drug properties," he said.
"But where this project is different is, we're going to be trying to engineer a parasite to secrete those into the infected personnel to protect them from any exposure they might encounter."
Professor Loukas says the process of delivering antibodies through a worm is most useful in a military scenario because the worms are constantly producing.
"They can just sit there and hopefully churn out the required amounts of these antibodies as opposed to a vaccination strategy which is quite different."