If you could put a face to the word “fortitude”, you will be met with that of Zhou Lihan, co‑founder and CEO of biotechnology company Mirxes. The China‑born, Singapore‑based scientist and entrepreneur was key in driving the company’s significant scale‑up in both the production as well as the local and global deployment of the Fortitude Kit, Singapore’s first diagnostic kit for Covid‑19 developed in 2020 by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) and its clinical partners, in the early days of the pandemic.
Formed in 2014 by former A*Star researchers, Mirxes’s claim to fame is developing GastroClear, the world’s first RNA‑powered blood test for the early detection of gastric cancer. The team’s goal is to turn what they have researched in academia into a product that can be commercialised to clinics and eventually, the community. At the heart of it, Zhou wants the healthcare industry to move from sick care to preventive care, with early detection as the key driving factor.
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