TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Damian Kao is the COO of Basepaws, a company he describes as a kind of 23andMe for cats that gives owners information to help keep their pets fighting fit.

Kao recently joined Jon of the Asianometry YouTube channel to discuss his company on the Startup Island Taiwan podcast, and said that, like a lot of startups, his company’s goals have changed over time. He said that the company’s initial hook was providing cat owners with information about the cat’s breed, just as 23andMe tells consumers about their ancestry composition, but has since directed its attention to cat health, which was always Kao’s intention.

“We look at certain health markers, certain genetic mutations that your cat might have, that are associated with known diseases” Kao said. “We can tell you, for example, if your cat might develop a kidney disease, and if we do, you might have to change its diet, or take your cat to the vet more often to get tests done.”

Basepaws also does tests on cats’ oral microbiome, looking at all the different bacteria and elements that are in there. “By looking at the different compositions of these microbes in the cat’s mouth we’re able to provide a risk for dental disease, or paradental disease, or tooth reabsorption, or a host of other diseases,” Kao said.

Kao said that he is particularly excited about his company’s plans to extend testing to systemic diseases also. “When you think about the oral microbiome you think about dental diseases obviously, but we are starting to see some signals that associate the oral microbiome with kidney disease, heart disease,” Kao said.

Kao said that while this kind of science is not particularly new, and has been done on humans for some time, Basepaws is hoping to expand upon the existing knowledge with their data.

Kao said that the genetic testing market for dogs was already quite big, but there were few to none operating in the cat space and that Basepaws was the first. He puts this down to two reasons; historical elements, and the availability of resources.

“Dog ownership and dog breeding, and the whole industry around dogs is just a lot older,” Kao said. “(There are) kennel clubs all over the world, dog breeding for specific traits has been going on for a long time (and) there’s actually a lot of money in it.

In 2022, Basepaws was acquired by the company Zoetis, a globally leading animal healthcare company. “We were immediately drawn to their passion for pets and the role that genetic testing and data analytics can have in advancing animal care,” Zoetis CEO Kristin Peck said at the time.