Professor Alex Loukas has worms, plenty of 'em, and he ain't worried about having 'em, not one little bit. 

Alex has spent his professional career working in parasitology, having nurtured a leaning towards worms in his second year of university.

"I went to Brisbane to university and I was going to be a marine biologist and then someone said you won't get a job as a marine biologist, so I did general zoology," Alex says.

"In second year, I did a subject on parasites and in third year a series of lectures on parasitology given by a very inspirational stunning lecturer.

I put up my hand after finishing his class to do a PhD under his guidance."

Currently working towards vaccines against modern, particularly auto-immune diseases, using the help of worms, Alex has just arrived back from the US, one of the many trips he makes each year to further his research.

At 42, he is a young professor, who has brought a team of eight, from post-doctoral fellows to PhD students and research assistants, to James Cook University Cairns to continue his research into the wonders of all things wormy.

What's fascinating is the very worms that pose a serious threat to health in third world countries are being used to help people with auto-immune diseases in the first.

In the developing countries of the tropics, hookworms can cause anaemia and malnutrition and they kill about 70,000 people each year, but in the developed world, where they are rarely found, they can help against diseases from asthma, to celiac disease, and even multiple sclerosis.

It's all about getting the balance right.

Some researchers have taken their research on the beneficial effects of worms to the limit.

When Californian Jasper Lawrence found that the parasitic hookworm could help his asthma, he became upset to realise no-one in the medical world was using the concept except to research vaccines which could take years to become approved.

He decided to travel to Cameroon in Africa to deliberately contract some worms by wandering around latrines in his bare feet.

"Hookworm is usually contracted via skin contact with soil that is polluted with faecal matter containing hookworm eggs," Professor Loukas says.

Jasper Lawrence was successful in contracting the parasite and upon his return to the US, he discovered his asthma was better.

Not content, however, in contracting the parasite for his own personal use, he began packaging and selling worms for a range of diseases before he was stopped by authorities.

Alex does not subscribe to Lawrence's methods because he says it's dangerous to use something that hasn't been approved and so he is taking the rather more difficult route of researching to find vaccines for worm infections and looking for ways to help people with autoimmune diseases with a pill imitating the mechanism of the worms.

"Vaccine development is a long arduous task," he says.

"It takes a long time to get from the discovery phase to actually getting something in the clinic.

We're still at the very early stages and we're testing these vaccines initially for safety in people."

Alex's work has two prongs.

He is working on a vaccination against worms which he gives to people in clinical trials in developing tropical countries.

They then go back to their villages, where they are exposed to hookworms or blood flukes again, and he keeps track of them to see whether they get reinfected and if so, by how much.

"Worms aren't as big killers as malaria or HIV but many more people are infected with worms than often any of those other pathogens," he says.

The second part of Alex's work is to look at how worms can help combat diseases.

"We take the worm secretions, their spit if you like," he says, laughing at the expression on my face that is showing a higher level of disgust than originally plastered my face at the mere mention of worms.

"We take what they spit into tissue when they are feeding on us, and on one side look for vaccinations from that information and on the other side use those molecules for therapies in autoimmune diseases.

The one we're particularly interest in is inflammatory bowel disease."

Alex, who is part of JCU's tropical disease research centre (Queensland Tropical Health Alliance), has already trialled worms as a cure for celiac disease and this year he hopes to begin human trials of a vaccine for the flatworm infection, schistosomiasis.

And what is the reaction of his family and friends to his fascination with worms?

"Yeuch," he says.

"There's a real gross factor to worms.

But when I explain to them the potential benefits, they are very supportive."

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