Researchers have traveled to the ends of the earth in search of exotic microorganisms that can produce the medicine we need to live and thrive. But as a new study points out, we may have overlooked an extremely rich source of drugs that was right under our noses: bacteria in and on the human body.

Scientists from University of California, San Francisco School of Pharmacy have pinpointed a vaginal bacterium that naturally plays a role in the organ’s defense, isolated and amplified its defense capabilities, and created an antibiotic that can kill harmful pathogens while sparing the bacteria that are an important part of the vagina’s bacterial environment.

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