(Yicai) Jan. 5 -- A chemotherapy drug developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb, an American pharmaceutical giant, can now be used in China to treat pancreatic cancer.

China's National Medical Products Administration approved Abraxane to be given to patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer along with another drug called Gemcitabine, the New Jersey-based company announced today. Before this, Abraxane was allowed to be used to treat recurrent breast cancer in China.

Pancreatic cancer, a type of cancer that begins in the pancreas and tends to be aggressive, killed a high number of 121,900 patients in China in 2020, according to statistics from the World Health Organization.

Abraxane is the only albumin-paclitaxel product found by phase-three clinical trials to notably improve pancreatic cancer patients' survival rate, per the firm. In global trials, the median survival of patients who took Abraxane in addition to Gemcitabine was extended by eight and a half months, and the risk of death fell by 28 percent.

The updated scope of the medicine should help hospitals carry out clinical diagnosis and treatments of pancreatic cancer in a standardized manner, said Shen Lin, chief of the gastroenterology cancer division at the Beijing Cancer Hospital.

Editor: Emmi Laine