‘If we can beat Covid, there’s no reason why we can’t beat cancer’: Mirxes’ Zhou Lihan on the science and tech behind saving lives

This year sees Mixres scaling the test development in the region with a project in Indonesia, with more markets, including the Philippines, in the pipeline. The earliest prototype of the test can be expected between late 2024 and early 2025. 

Zhou shares more about his path from scientist to entrepreneur, and the education and collaborations needed to save lives.

Most doctors come from a family or generation of doctors. What was your family’s background like?

Zhou Lihan (ZL): My grandpa was a doctor who served in the Korean War, saving as many lives and limbs as he could. You hear stories about the war and how they would prefer not to do it again. He came back from the war and settled down in a hospital in a small town in the mountains. 

My folks were engineers. They built things, but there was very little real knowledge of what a scientist did or what research was. 

I, on the other hand, wanted to be a firefighter.

Read more: The Singapore startup reaching the 52% of the world without healthcare

You grew up in China. Tell us about your early memories surrounding healthcare and the sciences.

ZL: I was born before China opened up. While everyone was not well-to-do, equality was there. Folks cared for each other. There was a great sharing culture because there wasn’t much. So when the family goes into a difficult situation, everybody helps—your neighbours, the folks in the next block; [there was] that kampong spirit. 

I was a sick child. I had pneumonia twice before I was six. So I was a patient in the hospital for a long time. I observed how the nurses and doctors acted. I would say the hospital is not unfamiliar to me.

When did you realise you had an aptitude for the sciences?

ZL: There was a lot of promotion in Singapore at the time I was in secondary school about going into life sciences and biomedical science, and I thought it sounded good. I was part of the second cohort of life science majors at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

You have a personal experience with a relative passing on due to cancer, which happened to be one of the first projects GastroClear worked on in its beginnings. Could you share more on that?

ZL: My uncle died of stomach cancer. He wasn’t perfectly healthy, but when he showed some symptoms and decided to see a doctor, it was already at stage 3B. From that to his passing on, it was about six months. The doctor said there wasn’t much that could be done, and that he wished that the cancer had been found earlier. 

That was the first time I heard that if cancer was discovered earlier, the outcome would have been different. 

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This light bulb in your head was key to your drive in pushing for early cancer detection. Tell us more about how this journey began.

ZL: My PhD was on Parkinson's disease, not cancer. But the tools that were developed and applied to neuroscience and Parkinson’s could be used to look at other diseases. We decided to give it a shot in 2010 and developed a technology that was able to measure something new, and we didn't know what this new thing could do.

How did the healthcare industry take to your research and findings?

ZL: There was a lot of interest, but also a lot of hesitation. It took us some time to convince our local doctors because patient blood is very precious. Every doctor would ask us, “Are you sure? This biological discovery that you are advocating is so new.”

So we bought blood samples from biobanks in the west. We wanted to show that there was a signal in the blood of early-stage cancer patients. We were able to detect signals in the blood of stage 1 cancer patients, who are typically asymptomatic. A lot of people got excited.

Mirxes was founded in 2014, two years after you showed proof of concept. What has the public sentiment been around the early detection of cancer?

ZL: The elderly have this impression that cancer is a death sentence. It’s still true because most cancers are found so late. In their mind, they think, “Don’t tell me even if I get it, I don’t have money to pay for the treatment.” 

Fast forward to the pandemic, how has it shifted the mindset of early detection?

ZL: The silver lining of Covid-19 is that it has given us a great education on things we didn’t know and had feared. The government, physicians and community educated one another. How do we detect it? How can we contain it? How can the biotech industry develop solutions to solve the problem? 

When we got into the fields of RNA and PCR 20 years ago, nobody knew what they were. Now, everyone knows, so there’s no longer that fear. Now we tell the uncles and aunties, “Look, if we can beat Covid, there’s no reason why we can’t beat cancer. You need to play your part and take care of your own health.”

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Are you a researcher first and an entrepreneur next? Which hat do you find yourself wearing the most?

ZL: We call ourselves “accidental entrepreneurs”. We knew that if we stayed in academia, there would be a limit to how far we can push the technology because research institutions are not meant for you to make a product. 

Wearing the entrepreneur hat is about being focused while looking out for opportunities to pivot. There’s never a straight line, especially when we are trying to push the boundaries of science and clinical practice. There isn’t a path for us to follow.

Innovation is key to developing and expanding Mirxes’ business. What are some of the biggest blockers you face right now?

ZL: There is no shortage of problems to solve nor are there shortages in technologies or funding. But there is a shortage of people. That’s the biggest bottleneck in innovation today. 

We’re excited about the possibility of prevention and precision medicine in this decade, but we’re outrunning ourselves in terms of the talent pipeline.

Looking back, what were your aspirations when you first started out in this field, and how has that purpose changed now, post-founding Mirxes and post-pandemic?

ZL: Mirxes’ goal has always been to save lives. It sounds cliche, but what does saving lives actually mean and how do we go about it? We have to develop the technology and make a product that’s actually accessible and affordable to patients, physicians and to the healthcare system.

See more honourees from the Healthcare & Sciences category of the Gen.T List 2022.