Meet Our Founder: Dr. Lucas Le — From French Research Labs to Vietnam’s Health Shelves
A decade ago, a Vietnamese food scientist trained at France’s most prestigious research institutes chose to return home with a single mission: bring the best of European healthcare science to Vietnamese families. Today, that mission has reached over 50 products and millions of lives.
When Dr. Lucas Le founded the company that would eventually become LKD Health, he carried with him something rare in Vietnam’s health-product import sector — a deep, hands-on scientific understanding of how European food supplements, nutraceuticals, and pharmaceutical-grade products are actually researched, formulated, and manufactured.
That scientific foundation is not a marketing claim. It is the result of more than a decade spent inside Europe’s leading research institutions and production facilities — and it remains, to this day, the single most important factor shaping which products LKD Health chooses to bring into Vietnam.
A Foundation Built in France’s Top Research Institutes
Dr. Lucas’s scientific journey began at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, where he graduated with honors in food industrial engineering. A scholarship from the French Embassy in Vietnam then took him to AgroSup Dijon, one of France’s most respected institutions for biology and food science, where he completed his Master’s degree.
He went on to earn his Doctorate (PhD) in Biology and Food Science as a research fellow funded by INRA — France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research — one of the country’s flagship national science institutes. During his doctoral and postdoctoral years, he also conducted research in collaboration with CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research), the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
His scientific work was published in five peer-reviewed international journals, including Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, the Journal of Dairy Science, and the Biophysical Journal — a publication record that placed him firmly within the international community of food and nutrition scientists.
Five Years Inside European Manufacturing
A doctorate would have been enough to launch an academic career. Dr. Lucas chose a different path.
After completing his PhD, he spent five years working in a French food supplement manufacturing facility, where he managed Research & Development — overseeing the formulation of new products, evaluating raw materials and botanical actives, and learning, in detail, how European factories translate scientific evidence into safe, stable, market-ready products.
It was here that he came to understand what truly separates a European-grade supplement from an ordinary one: not the packaging or the marketing, but the rigor behind it. The stability testing across the full shelf-life. The clean production lines and high-precision blending equipment that ensure every capsule contains exactly the active dose it claims. The microencapsulation technologies that protect probiotic strains from stomach acid so they actually reach the intestine.
These are the details Dr. Lucas learned to look for — and they are the details that continue to define LKD Health’s selection criteria today.
A Promise to Return
Long before his doctorate was complete, Dr. Lucas had made himself a quiet promise: that whatever he learned in France, he would bring back to Vietnam.
He kept that promise. At a stage in his career when staying in France would have meant a stable, well-paid position in a respected industry, he chose instead to return — to apply European scientific standards to one of Vietnam’s most fragmented and most consequential consumer categories: health products for families.
In 2016, he founded EUSTA, the predecessor company to LKD Health, with a simple guiding idea expressed in its original slogan: “Global innovations for local well-being.” The goal was never to import products en masse. The goal was to identify the European formulations whose science, manufacturing, and clinical evidence genuinely deserved a place on Vietnamese shelves — and then to do the hard work of bringing them home.
A Decade On — More Than 50 Products, Millions of Lives
Today, after more than ten years dedicated to sourcing healthcare products for Vietnamese consumers, the company founded by Dr. Lucas — now operating as LKD Health — has:
- Imported more than 50 carefully selected products from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Hungary and other European markets.
- Supported millions of Vietnamese consumers in their daily health and well-being routines — from infant nutrition and maternal care to immunity, fertility support, liver and brain health, joint care, and more.
- Built lasting partnerships with Vietnamese pharmaceutical distributors, providing them with differentiated, evidence-based products that strengthen their portfolios and create sustainable commercial opportunities.
The numbers matter, but the philosophy behind them matters more. Each of those 50+ products went through the same filter: Does the formulation rest on real science? Is the manufacturer one we would trust with our own families? Does this product genuinely meet a need in the Vietnamese market — or is it just another addition to a crowded shelf?
When the answer to any of those questions is unclear, LKD Health says no.
Looking Forward
Dr. Lucas continues to travel regularly between Vietnam and Europe, conducting on-site visits to manufacturing partners, evaluating new formulations, and tracking emerging research — from advanced probiotic strains for women’s health to next-generation vitamin D bioavailability technologies, or new patent for baby skin problems treatment….
His scientific network across French and broader European research institutions remains active, and continues to feed directly into LKD Health’s product pipeline.
For Vietnamese distributors, retailers, and partners working with LKD Health, this is what stands behind every shipment that arrives: a founder who has personally walked the production lines, read the clinical studies in their original language, and signed off on each product because the science holds up.
For European manufacturers considering Vietnam, it means a partner who speaks their scientific language — and who can navigate Vietnamese regulation, distribution, and market culture with equal fluency.
Ten years in, the promise that brought Dr. Lucas home is still the same promise that drives the company forward — and it has only just begun to be fulfilled.