Wendy Yuan's first message to people with overlooked health needs, like those living with Wilson's disease, is that they are not alone. Yuan is the co-founder of Zinca, a company building nutrition solutions and connecting patients, researchers, and manufacturers to provide verified solutions on managing the disease.
First identified over a century ago, Wilson’s disease is an inherited genetic disorder that affects one in 30,000 people. The disease prevents the body from eliminating excess copper that then builds up in the liver, brain, and eyes which can cause organ damage and is often misdiagnosed as a liver or mental health problem.
The disease requires people to follow a strict low-copper diet to manage the condition. But for these people, finding the right nutritional information and products is only part of a much larger challenge. They often have trouble getting properly diagnosed, because many physicians are unaware of the array of symptoms the disease can present.
Yuan has experienced this firsthand. She had a pregnancy that ended in loss, and found that the healthcare system had no good answers for managing Wilson's disease through such a critical period and no way to tell her whether the disease had contributed to the loss. That experience led her to look closely at the research and support available for Wilson's disease.
“Even though my doctors did everything they could to help me, our healthcare system could have supported me better. At that time, I felt this area needed more research and more investment so that people could manage this disease over the long term,” Yuan said.
Once diagnosed, managing the disease day to day brings its own hurdles. The first is diet. Planning your own meals is genuinely hard. Reliable guidance does exist, but it often isn't detailed enough and it rarely covers packaged foods or condiments The second challenge is staying on treatment over the long term, since the medication can mean taking many doses every single day, all while coping with the burden of long-term treatment and a restricted diet, which makes adherence and nutritional support even more important. The third is simply finding relevant, trustworthy information and products in the first place. The stakes are high: incorrect treatment can worsen the disease, and may even prove fatal.
Yuan and other co-founders launched Zinca in 2024 to make that information and products easier to find. The team launched its first not-for-profit project, https://livingwithwilson.org, a free resource that translates dense medical research and clinical guidance into plain language that patients and caregivers can actually use. Also in the pipeline is a nutrition product and app primarily developed for those living with Wilson's disease.
In the past, serving such a small, niche market looked commercially impossible — but Zinca is now making it viable through AI and automated manufacturing. The company hopes to serve more of these overlooked needs, starting with Wilson's disease.
“We know there's medication, and there's a long-term low-copper diet that helps people maintain a relatively stable condition. However, there are still so many unanswered questions,” she said.
Yuan and other co-founders chose Markham for the support the city provides for founders. The team’s work recently won the YSpace GBA Startup Sprint Challenge and they have signed a partnership agreement with a professor at Johns Hopkins University to further their research. In addition to support from the City of Markham, Zinca has received backing from teams at the University of Guelph, York University, and ventureLAB.
“We want to prove that supporting people with overlooked health needs can be a sustainable business,” Yuan said.
