A scientist from County Cavan has come up with a new way to help tackle cancer.
Shane Cronin's research shows that by activating the immune system with the happiness hormone Serotonin the body can fight the disease more effectively.
The scientist, who works at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA), has published his groundbreaking paper on the novel way of activating the immune system in the journal, Nature.
Mr Cronin, from Ballyjamesduff, explained that activating the immune system means the body can defend itself against cancer cells and invading pathogens.
He said: "What we actually showed in the paper is that by increasing and turning up the amount of BH4, the t-cells were more aggressive and able to fight cancer much more aggressively.
"So this has very important clinical implications because the way we can turn BH4 down, we actually developed a brand new novel drug to do this, and also by turning it up, there's a drug already out there being used for completely different purposes."
