(Yicai Global) Aug. 24 -- China's State Drug Administration has approved AstraZeneca, a United Kingdom-based pharmaceuticals firm, to sell the first ovarian cancer treatment available in the world's most populous country.

AstraZeneca, which was formed from a British-Swedish merger in 1999, applied for permission to distribute the poly ADB-ribose polymerase inhibitor named Olaparib just nine months ago, it said in a statement yesterday. The drug can reduce the risk of death from ovarian cancer by 65 percent, according to test reports.

The drug is the first PARP inhibitor for treating recurrent ovarian cancer to get the green light in China, George Chen, president of AstraZeneca China's new drug development department, said in the statement. It is also the first such drug to get approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Ovarian cancer is a malignant tumor and the third most common cancer type among Chinese women. Some 52,100 people in the country become ill with the disease every year, with more than half of them passing away -- likely because 70 percent of the patients are already in the advanced stages of the disease by the time they are diagnosed.

The five-year survival rate for patients in China is around 39 percent, while the five-year recurrence rate is 70 percent.

Editor: James Boynton