YouJia Medical Carves Out a Niche in Molecular Diagnostics with Focus on Thyroid Disease

In early 2019, besides the sound of New Year’s firecrackers, what excited Liu Jianquan even more was that his company had just completed its first round of financing, with Shanghai Licheng Asset Management as the investor. Having secured funding quickly amid a capital winter, he felt extremely fortunate.

Liu Jianquan’s company, UJia Medical, is a molecular diagnostics firm. Unlike the many companies currently flocking to the tumor testing sector, UJia Medical focuses on diagnostic and early screening services for thyroid diseases.

After graduating in 2006, Liu Jianquan has been working in the pharmaceutical industry. From Pfizer to GSK, and then to Sanofi, moving from sales to marketing, he has accumulated extensive medical resources within international pharmaceutical companies. In 2012, after joining the marketing department of Hisun Pfizer, he was responsible for the market promotion of hematology-oncology products. Marketing is a core department in pharmaceutical companies, where he identified gaps in the clinical diagnosis of hematological diseases. “The marketing department should not only focus on product sales performance; it needs sufficient sensitivity to identify the unmet needs of doctors and patients,” he said. “There are many shortcomings in the clinical diagnosis of hematologic malignancies, with many products exhibiting insufficient sensitivity.”

At that time, the cost of next-generation sequencing (NGS) was declining rapidly, and he recognized the significant advantages of NGS technology platforms. In 2015, Liu Jianquan co-founded an NGS company with several like-minded friends, focusing on B2B services by primarily customizing panels for diagnostic companies. They developed China’s first multiplex PCR quantitative detection panel. However, the B2B model made him feel increasingly distant from clinical practice. “My expertise lies in the clinical sector, so I have been constantly exploring how to break through,” he stated. Nevertheless, he continued to ponder where to make his entry and what kind of team to build.

At this point, Liu Jianquan thought of his former classmate, Dr. Liang, a Tsinghua University graduate. Dr. Liang’s research team comprised nearly 20 members and had amassed substantial foundational research achievements in next-generation sequencing (NGS), polymerase chain reaction (PCR), photochemistry, and electrochemistry. Liu Jianquan knew that Dr. Liang had long sought opportunities to translate these technologies into practical applications. Only by moving out of the laboratory could the technology realize its greater value. Leveraging their many years of friendship and mutual trust, the two quickly reached an agreement.

“Scientists are more concerned with how much value technology can create for society, while product commercialization and sales are my strengths,” explained Liu Jianquan. After several rounds of discussion, they reached a consensus to leverage each other’s expertise to translate the technology into clinical applications and generate value.

Youjia Medical was founded in 2017, at a time when the hottest sector in NGS—tumor detection—had already become an intensely competitive “red ocean,” with industry giants clearly emerging. Consequently, the company needed to exercise greater caution in selecting its strategic focus.

Whether in tumor detection, birth defect screening, or consumer-grade testing, the industry already sees several large-scale companies. Youjia Medical has just been established, and direct competition with these giants would be akin to striking a stone with an egg. “Product quality alone does not determine success; even the best products are meaningless if the market does not accept them. Clearly, we cannot compete head-to-head with larger corporations in the marketplace,” said Liu Jianquan. He needs to identify a niche that combines clinical demand, technological barriers, and distinct market differentiation.

After several brainstorming sessions with Dr. Liang, they decided to enter the market through thyroid disease detection. Thyroid tumors are not highly lethal, and for most patients, testing is not an urgent necessity. However, Liu Jianquan told VCBeat News that their target population consists solely of the 5% of patients with critical diagnostic needs who cannot be diagnosed using ultrasound and cytology alone.

Thyroid nodules are a highly prevalent condition, with an incidence rate ranging from 22% to 70% (among which approximately 5–15% are malignant thyroid cancers). However, unlike highly lethal malignancies such as lung and liver cancer, the five-year survival rate for thyroid cancer in China is 84.3%, and most nodules can be evaluated through ultrasound and cytological testing. In contrast, molecular diagnostic technologies are not essential for the majority of thyroid tumor patients; consequently, most companies do not offer corresponding testing panels, or provide only nominal coverage.

“Although most cases can be differentiated using B-mode ultrasound and cytology, approximately 5% of patients have thyroid tumors that remain undetectable by current clinical diagnostic methods. This subset requires molecular diagnostic techniques,” explained Liu Jianquan. He believes this may represent a strategic entry point for Youjia Medical.

The combination of “definitive testing” and “exclusionary testing,” as recommended by the American Thyroid Association (ATA) guidelines, represents a multi-omics approach. However, due to the limited volume of fine-needle aspiration samples, no product currently available in China can perform both types of testing simultaneously.

Liu Jianquan explained that single-omics approaches often fail to meet the demands of precision medicine. For instance, in the differential diagnosis of benign versus malignant thyroid nodules, focusing solely on driver genes from a genomics perspective yields high specificity. However, sensitivity is insufficient, as nearly half of patients with thyroid nodules do not harbor thyroid cancer–associated mutations. Although most of these patients have benign nodules, a subset still develops thyroid cancer of unknown etiology. “This is where transcriptomics plays its proper role,” he continued. Transcriptomics can distinguish thyroid nodules from cancer cells based on energy metabolism and cell proliferation, offering high sensitivity.

“Genomic and transcriptomic data complement each other, enabling more precise diagnosis of thyroid nodules,” said Liu Jianquan.

Patients with confirmed thyroid tumors can undergo surgical resection to remove the lesions; however, there is currently limited clinical evidence to guide the determination of the extent of resection. Issues such as whether to preserve thyroid function (total thyroidectomy versus lobectomy), and whether and under what circumstances to perform lymph node dissection, remain subjects of ongoing debate within the medical community. Advances in modern molecular diagnostics have provided a basis for addressing these questions. Next, UJIA Medical will explore how to develop standardized products based on these insights.

After identifying his market entry point, Liu Jianquan swiftly formulated a subsequent plan and began work on translating technology into products and building his team. He told VCBeat New Medicine that although the wave of companies founded in 2014 occupied most of the tracks in the NGS field, he had to admit that their experience helped him avoid many detours during his entrepreneurial journey.

The team at Youjia Medical encompasses diverse backgrounds ranging from technology to medicine, product to marketing, and bioinformatics to algorithms. Liu Jianquan has also invited Dr. Wang Yijing from the University of Glasgow to serve as Chief Scientist. Although the team comprises fewer than 20 members, it is small yet fully functional.

The company is currently the only one in China engaged in multi-omics R&D, and has secured a patent for mRNA-based targeted quantitative detection technology. “This is the moat we have built for ourselves; it encompasses not just genomics or transcriptomics, but all omics disciplines involved in genetics.”

Liu Jianquan revealed to VCBeat that existing genomics models map one variant to one annotation, which is far from sufficient for multi-omics diagnostics. To address this, they developed their own algorithms and reconstructed a multi-omics model based on their accumulated data. “Multi-omics requires the establishment of data models; however, such models are inaccurate when sample sizes are small,” he explained to the reporter. Over the past two years, they have collaborated extensively with leading hospitals in China specializing in thyroid diseases, accumulating more than 2,000 samples.

Empowered by big data and AI, the precision of periodic testing will see incremental improvements. Consequently, the product form is not static. “We have already iterated to our third-generation product,” Liu Jianquan revealed to VCBeat New Medicine. To date, they have increased the detection accuracy for thyroid follicular carcinoma to over 90%. “Thyroid follicular carcinoma and follicular adenoma are difficult to differentiate through fine-needle aspiration biopsy.”

Currently, Youjia Medical has achieved small-scale market coverage through laboratories and hospitals, primarily in the Beijing, Hebei, and Tianjin regions. Moving forward, the company will continue to accumulate data through collaborations with medical inspection institutes and hospitals, and further upgrade its products by leveraging insights derived from this data.

Moving forward, Liu Jianquan hopes to work with his team to refine the product and ultimately establish it as an industry-standard solution. Leveraging their multi-omics technology platform, they will sequentially launch multi-omics testing products for breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and other conditions, aiming to develop more precise diagnostic and early screening solutions to benefit a broad patient population.