Celebrity Life

I'm holding a vial about the size of my thumb, which contains a cotton bud I’ve used to swab the inside of my cheek. It’s hard to believe that inside this tiny container is the key to most of the questions I’ve ever had about myself – my ancestry, my body type and whether I’m at risk of hereditary disease.

These are some of the most commonly asked queries, but did you know you can also find out more about your own personality – whether, for example, you’re an agreeable person? You could find out more about your ideal sporting regimen – what exercises are most effective for you? You could even find out if you were cut out to be an entrepreneur through analysing your success traits.

Within this vial is, of course, a sample of your DNA. Scientists have studied the human genome for decades to understand our genetic make-up. Mapping out the human genome in its entirety was only declared complete in 2003 with the Human Genome Project, which was started in 1990 and involved a massive collaboration between scientists around the world. Nowadays, it takes 18 days to run tests based on your saliva sample, utilising whole exome-sequencing technology, which gives you 500 reports to tell you everything you’ve ever wanted to know – and perhaps some things you didn’t – about yourself.

CircleDNA by Prenetics is one of the leading genetics companies to offer this service, and today I’m meeting its founder, Danny Yeung, to find out how it all began.

The Impact of Covid

It’s an extremely busy time for Yeung; in a year when health has become more important than ever before, sales for the CircleDNA kit have skyrocketed. But, more than that, Yeung has branched out to establish Project Screen, which uses WHO- recommended testing technologies as part of a turnkey solution to enable key industries and sports leagues safely to return to work and play.

“Interestingly enough,” says Yeung, “I’d say there are three to four companies that have really made an impact on Covid-19 – and they all came from genetic testing, because a lot of the laboratory equipment, and the scientific and medical aspects, are highy transferable to Covid testing.”

His company, Prenetics, made the pivot to Covid testing last March, when Yeung received a barrage of messages from close friends asking whether his company offered it. “It was difficult to get a Covid test back then. You had to pay HK$3,000-$4,000 for a Covid test and that was only limited to a few hospitals,” Yeung explains. “It seemed just insane to me, so we had a meeting with senior government officials in Hong Kong to see if we could play a supporting role.”

Operating five test centres in the community, Prenetics has carried out more than 400,000 PCR tests, identifying a few hundred positive cases within the community. At its peak, the company was doing 20,000 tests a day in Hong Kong alone.

Danny Yeung's Pivot to Health

An entrepreneur his whole adult life, health hadn’t been a top priority for Yeung. “It was probably the last thing I thought about,” he says. “I started working before I was 15, and began my first business at 25. You don’t take care of yourself as an entrepreneur, you eat crappy food and you don’t sleep.

“When I moved to Hong Kong in 2010, that was probably my most unhealthy time. This was when I started uBuyiBuy and Groupon – I was working with restaurants, going out a lot, eating a lot and socialising.”

Here, Yeung makes another observation. Health wasn’t a priority for him, but nor was it a priority for many others. “You only think of health and wellness when you’re already able to survive,” he says. “In many aspects, health is a kind of luxury. To have a healthy lifestyle is actually more expensive, correct? So I wasn’t always healthy. I wasn’t always eating properly.

“Health is a journey, right? It’s not an overnight thing,” says Yeung, who only really begun to think about the subject in 2014, around the time he left Groupon and became a father. For his next venture, he wanted to explore health. He didn’t have a background in science or medicine, but he’d developed an interest in genetics testing, finding it a powerful tool for people to take charge of their own health and take necessary steps to live healthier and stronger.

“Health is a journey. It's not an overnight thing”

Danny Yeung

A Health Scare

Yeung himself has first-hand experience. Now aged just 36, he discovered through genetic testing a few years ago that he had an increased risk for colon cancer. “It was a surprise to me, because I don’t have a family history of cancer,” he says. Within the general health-care system, a colonoscopy was only recommended at the age of 50. Realising many years earlier that he has an increased risk means he can actively take steps to reduce it.

“Genetics isn’t a death sentence,” says Yeung. “If you know you have an increased risk, why increase that risk further?” He began to live more healthily, managing his diet, cutting out red meat and exercising more. “I lost 20 pounds. I used to love steak, but once you know this information, you’re motivated to make these changes.”

Although self-care is a huge topic today, it often feels like a luxury. After all, pamper-me moments are only possible if you can afford the time and the money to do it. But shouldn’t health – both physical and mental – be essential and accessible to everyone?

Yeung certainly feels this way. “That’s why we launched CircleDNA,” he says. “I felt that the best form of medicine is actually prevention, not treatment. Because once you have the disease, whether it’s high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or cancer – whatever it is – you want the best doctor and the best treatment, and all of this is very costly. It’s also not the best treatment. Those who are invested in their own health already have this amazing tool that can really enable them to make the right choices for the rest of their life.”

“Those who are invested in their own health already have this amazing tool that can really enable them to make the right choices for the rest of their life”

Danny Yeung

How CircleDNA Works

The procedure is so simple it’s almost shocking. You simply swab your saliva, seal the sample in the vial provided and mail it to Prenetics. You’re given 500 reports within 18 days, all of which you can access through CircleDNA’s user-friendly mobile app.

“When I started looking into this six years ago, that was what fascinated me the most. I was really fascinated that you can do so little and get so much information,” says Yeung. “That’s all due to the genetic-sequencing technology. It’s not new technology, but we’ve been able to make it much more cost-effective. The Human Genome Project cost about US$3 billion to map out, but the cost to individuals has dropped dramatically, to a few thousand Hong Kong dollars.”

The 500 tests span 20 categories, mapping out common health risks, cancers, diseases, dementia and brain health, as well as touching on family planning, ancestry and gender traits. You can learn about planning your diet, nutrition, stress and sleep patterns, as well as your skin type, general wellbeing and sports and fitness regimes. You can even find out your sensitivities to pollution and drugs, and learn about your physical, personality, behavioural and success traits. Are you gifted in music and dance? Well, it’s a mystery no more. Genetic testing has taken out all the guesswork, and put your health and wellbeing back into your own hands.

“You can find out so much about yourself,” says Yeung. “And the great thing is, in terms of health and wellness, it’s such a small cost for a lifetime of information.”

The post Danny Yeung: Investing in Our Own Health appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Wouldn’t it be great to know the optimal diet that successfully makes you lose weight? Or understand your skin’s natural ability to combat wrinkles and be able to strengthen that ability? Or even better, detect that you have a high risk of cancer and be able to prevent rather than treat it?

The good news you can do all these things and more -- all it takes is a simple saliva swab.

We’re talking about Circle DNA, the world’s most comprehensive DNA test that delivers over 500 personalised reports on categories such as disease risk, food sensitivity, and even your personality and behavioural traits. It’s backed by Chinese stars G.E.M., Gigi Leung, and Vanness Wu, and it might just be the health and wellness solution of the future.

We decided to delve a little deeper and met up with CEO and Co-founder Danny Yeung to find out more. Read on to discover how he started, what it takes to be in the genetic-testing industry and most importantly, does it actually work?

Name: Danny Yeung
Profession: CEO and Co-founder of Circle DNA (Prenetics)
Industry: Genetic Testing
Startup since: 2014

Tell us about your business in your own words.

With a simple saliva sample you can uncover different things about yourself -- your genetic blueprint. Things like how to optimise your diet and nutrition, stress profile, pharmacogenetics (your response to drugs), as well as more serious items related to health. It can identify your genetic risk for cancers and diseases: dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s. Even for family planning: if you’re looking to have a child, you can check if you or your partner have any genetic conditions that may or may not pass on to your unborn baby.

You can have a full profile of yourself so you can understand what you need to watch out for, areas that need attention and areas that can be optimised -- it’s optimised wellbeing.

We are focused on health and prevention. We believe everyone should have the power to understand this information. And once you have this information, this is where you can make changes to your diet and lifestyle, ultimately delaying diseases and cancers.

[caption id="attachment_165700" align="alignnone" width="2560"] There are four different Circle DNA test kits that range from HK$1,490 to HK$4,990[/caption]

What’s behind the name Circle DNA?

Circle of life! It’s our direct consumer genetics testing brand, so we wanted to have a name that people would relate to and can remember, and ultimately understand what we do straight away.

Tell me about your best and worst days at work?

The best days are when we launch a product, or when we interview passionate potential employees that eventually join us. New partnerships or distribution deals, too. These are good days. But I do think that we make good progress every day, so I guess, they’re all good days. Ultimately what drives us is that we are making a difference for society. We’re making a difference to someone’s health, to their family and potentially the next generation.

I don’t know if there is a worst day. I have a very optimistic viewpoint naturally. It’s something that comes with being an entrepreneur, I think. Every day has its ups and downs; the challenge is how you get through them.

What do you do when you’re not at work?

When I’m not at work, I like to spend time with my daughter. She’s five years old. We like to take her out to play. Recently, we’ve been spending a lot of time on the South Side and we go to the beach.

[caption id="attachment_165705" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Yeung with his daughter[/caption]

Is that how you ‘switch off’?

Not really. As an entrepreneur, you always have to be switched on. So throughout my life, or at least in the last 15 years since becoming an entrepreneur, it’s been a big part of me, always making sure I’m available. So I never switch off fully.

I look at things with a very logical and optimistic perspective so I don’t get stressed much, either. I try not to dwell on things, especially things I can’t control.

Looking back now, what would you have done differently?

Everything that we have done is part of the learning process. Do I regret anything? No. We’re moving in the right direction. The reason we launched Circle [DNA] now, as opposed to 4, 3 or 2 years ago, is because health and wellness has only become a much bigger topic in the last year or two. People are more aware now. So launching now, people already have a good idea.

What advice would you give to someone looking to start up?

In the health industry, you have to be a little more patient. It takes time to gain traction. Also, there are certain regulatory aspects, government approvals, lab certifications and a lot of different things that you have to do properly. At the end of the day, it’s about people’s health, so you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to make sure you’re providing the best information to people.

Also, you need to have different stakeholders. Different partners. People that can help get the word out about health. You need to have different parties involved.

Lastly, find out your unique selling proposition, whatever business you’re in. If you don’t have one, then you shouldn’t go into business. A lot of people don’t realise that.

[caption id="attachment_165703" align="alignnone" width="1200"] (Left to right) Vanness Wu, Gigi Leung, G.E.M. and Danny Yeung[/caption]

As a child, what did you aspire to be?

Actually, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I knew that I wanted to have my own business. I didn’t know that it would be this, but I knew I wanted to do my own thing. That’s why I started working really young. I started when I was 15! Or at least that's when I was getting paid. I started working at a baseball card shop when I was 12 and the owner paid me in baseball cards.

What has been your biggest hurdle and how did you overcome it?

I wouldn’t say hurdle, but the biggest challenge, even now, is education. There’s still a lot of misinformation about what genetic testing can do. There’s are people who are like, “I don’t want to know” because they think it’s like a paternity test. But the technology has evolved to be much more than that, so awareness and education for genetic testing is still very important.

We’ve been able to do that somewhat, and have utilised three celebrities -- G.E.M., Vanness [Wu] and Gigi Leung -- who have come on board as our ambassadors. G.E.M., who is also an investor of the company, is putting her own personal name on it. It helps to create awareness, but it’s a continuous challenge. We’re still quite new to this space. I mean, in the US, roughly 8% of the population have done a genetic test. Here, in Asia, it’s only about 0.08%. So you can see the growth opportunity is massive.

Why is Hong Kong such an important market for Circle DNA?

I think Hong Kong is a great place. It’s like the hub between China and Southeast Asia, the connector. I also think Hong Kong is a challenging business environment. If you can survive and succeed here, you should be able to succeed anywhere else. It’s fast-paced and people are passionate here, too.

[caption id="attachment_165702" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Yeung with G.E.M., an investor and ambassador of Circle DNA[/caption]

If you were to invest in another start up, which would it be?

I think there are a lot of innovations in health and AI. Better solutions. There is still a lot of opportunity here. For instance turning something invasive into non-invasive. These are areas that are worth looking into.

What are your goals for 2019? And in the near future?

We are putting further effort into Circle DNA. Last month, we announced a major and exclusive partnership with Watsons where you can walk into any of the stores in Hong Kong and buy our product.

We’re looking to launch in Singapore and Taiwan next year as well, not to mention expanding our business in China. As for new products on the market, that’ll be next year, too.

How do you define success? And do you consider yourself successful?

There may be people that already consider me successful, but I don’t look at it that way. I still feel we have a very long way to go. We’re maybe at 1% of where we should be, but it has been a great journey thus far. We’ve been making the right strategic moves, we have the right investors, the right partnerships and the right business model. Now, we have to just scale and execute.

Ultimately we want to impact millions of people here in Asia. Once we reach a million people, then I might say, “Hey, we’re on to something”. But after that, I’ll have more goals.

[caption id="attachment_165704" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Yeung with the Circle DNA team[/caption]

With other genetic tests on the market, how does Circle DNA compare with the others?

For our technology, the first thing to note is that we utilise whole exome sequencing, while our competitors utilise a technology called genotyping. The problem with genotyping is you’re only looking at a snip of a gene. You’re not looking at the whole gene, so you’re likely to miss a lot. In fact, a recent study revealed that genotyping companies have a 85% false positive rate. Which means if they provide any positive results, 85% of the time, it’s wrong.

Meanwhile, our test has also been externally validated by CUHK, the Croucher Laboratory for Human Genomics, for analytical accuracy at 99.9%. Accuracy to determine that gender mutation does exist in your body.

Do you have examples of people that Circle DNA has worked on?

I’m a prime example. About three years ago, I actually detected that I have an increased risk of colon cancer. So of course, I was quite scared and shocked because I don’t have a family history of cancer. In fact, 40-50% of people who have genetic mutations do not have a history.

It was because of that risk that I modified my diet and lifestyle. I cut out red meat and lost over 20 pounds over the last 3 years. And I also started early screening at 37 years of age. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t get those results. I would have most likely waited until age 50, which is the global recommendation for screening. But for someone like me with an increased risk, that may have been too late for me.

So will I live longer if I take the test?

That’s a bold statement to make, but I can certainly say that our tests can definitely delay or help people to prevent diseases and cancers, therefore saving lives.

For more information about Circle DNA, visit their website here.

The post Startup Life: Danny Yeung of Circle DNA on How Genetic Testing Can Save Lives appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.