A scientist behind pioneering research into a test which can show if a patient has a brain tumour by analysing their tears says the work was deeply personal to her.
Prof Petra Hamerlik, who is leading the study at the University of Manchester, said she was 15 when she lost her father to a brain tumour that had taken eight months to diagnose.
She said the experience motivated her to find a better way to diagnose brain tumours.
The ground-breaking screening test, which started with a casual chat between two scientists in a bar in Denmark in 2012, has proved successful in initial trials, and the research is about to be published worldwide.
Hamerlik told North West Tonight: “In that conversation it somehow came up that he was analysing tears for some ocular diseases and I said, ‘What if there is a connection?’ because we know the eye is the extension of the central nervous system.
“We speculated that maybe whatever is happening in the brain when the tumour starts growing it is mirrored and reflected in the tear fluid.
“So that was kind of the first thought.”