'Gut health determines how well your supplements work': Amway Korea, HEM Pharma on their microbiome mission

Interview: Cho Hae of Amway Korea and Ji Joseph of HEM Pharma

After building a 150,000-record gut database with 'MyLab,' the two companies launch a new two-product gut solution

'We developed two exclusive strains by analyzing the top and bottom 10% of MyLab data'

'Gut health connects to whole-body health — we will keep researching immunity and aging'

Cho Hae (left), executive director at Amway Korea, and Ji Joseph, CEO of HEM Pharma, speak during an interview at Amway Korea's headquarters in Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on Thursday. [Amway Korea]

Amway Korea and HEM Pharma have deepened their collaboration, following the 2022 launch of MyLab — a personalized microbiome analysis solution — with the release earlier this month of a two-product gut health line called the "Seamless Gut Solution." The partners have also recently published joint research findings focusing on the metabolic activity of gut microbes and the exchange of metabolites between them, a process known as cross-feeding. The Korea Herald sat down with Cho Hae, executive director at Amway Korea, and Ji Joseph, CEO of HEM Pharma, on Thursday — two collaborators who say they communicate dozens of times a day.

Their decade-long partnership grew out of a simple question: why do nutritional supplements work differently for different people? Ginseng, for example, suits some people well while others notice little effect. For ginsenosides — the active compounds in ginseng — to work in the body, they must first be converted into a smaller form, a process that depends on gut microbes. Without sufficient microbes, the conversion fails. The same principle applies to multivitamins, milk thistle and many other supplements: an ingredient must be ingested, metabolized by gut microbes and then absorbed in a usable form.

That insight drew both companies' attention to the microbiome — the community of microorganisms living in and on the human body, as well as in animals and plants. The gut microbiome in particular has attracted growing scientific interest for its outsized influence on whole-body health. When the gut microbes responsible for maintaining the intestinal barrier become depleted, the gut can "leak," allowing toxins and bacteria to enter the bloodstream. Conversely, a well-balanced gut microbiome enables the body to absorb beneficial nutrients more fully.

"Taking in good phytonutrients matters, but so does having a gut environment capable of putting those nutrients to use," Cho said. "That is essentially why we took an early interest in the microbiome. Even with high-quality ingredients and phytonutrients, we knew we had to understand why people respond so differently. The microbiome can play a crucial role in understanding and bridging that gap."

Through MyLab — the fruit of seven years of research — Amway Korea and HEM Pharma have accumulated more than 150,000 data points on Korean gut microbiomes, the largest database of its kind held by a single research institution in the world. Drawing on that data, the two companies identified the beneficial bacteria shared by the top 10 percent of individuals ranked by gut health indicators — the so-called "super humans" — and examined what distinguished the bottom 10 percent as well.

Models introduce the Amway Korea "Seamless Gut Solution" two-product line at its launch event. [Amway Korea]

That analysis led to the design and development of two proprietary bacterial strains, which became the cornerstone of the Seamless Gut Solution. The line consists of Nutrilite Begin, formulated to strengthen the gut environment, and Nutrilite Probiotics, which contains the two exclusive strains and is designed to replenish beneficial bacteria. Research confirmed that taking both products together increased short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) — metabolites produced by gut microbes — as well as butyric acid, generated through interactions among gut microbes. The development also drew on HEM Pharma's PMAS platform, a colon-simulation-based screening system for predicting individual responses.

Ji describes the gut, in the language of microbiome science, as a "drug factory" — a pharmaceutical plant inside the body. "We consume raw ingredients, and gut microbes break them down and convert them into substances the body can actually use," he said. "What ultimately matters is how many capable workers — 'super employees' — you have in that factory. If MyLab is about analyzing the gut environment and optimizing the factory itself, Nutrilite Probiotics is about bringing in super employees who perform specific functions."

Research into the gut-brain axis — the link between gut and brain health — is advancing rapidly, alongside growing study of connections between the gut and the liver, lungs and skin. Amway Korea and HEM Pharma are continuing to investigate how gut health affects the whole body. Given that an estimated 70 to 80 percent of immune cells reside in the gut, the two companies are running clinical trials based on the hypothesis that gut immune function is directly tied to systemic immunity. They plan to publish the results in an international academic journal around early next year.

Aging is another frontier the partnership intends to explore. HEM Pharma recently established a joint microbiome anti-aging research center with Juntendo University School of Medicine in Japan. "Multiple studies have found that the microbiomes of people who live healthily past 100 closely resemble those of much younger individuals," Ji said. "We are conducting research into Nutrilite Probiotics that looks not only at gut barrier health and immunity, but also at its potential role in anti-aging." Cho added: "As we age, the body's ability to absorb and utilize beneficial substances can decline. That makes it all the more important to take in good phytonutrients and maintain a gut environment capable of putting them to work."

Both executives see vast potential in the Korean microbiome dataset built through MyLab. Cho plans to integrate AI technology into the database to accelerate and deepen the research. "We will keep identifying the optimal synergistic combinations of phytonutrients and probiotics, and bring together insights on gut health and aging to deliver an even more advanced, personalized wellness solution," he said.

Ji said the field of gut health management is moving beyond simply mapping the composition of gut microbes. "The direction will be toward understanding what functions those microbes are actually performing and how they affect an individual's health," he said. "Ultimately, our goal is to predict how a person will respond based on their own gut environment, and to further refine data-driven, personalized health management solutions."

spa@heraldcorp.com