(Yicai) June 24 -- Hutchmed said the Chinese innovative pharmaceutical firm's new metastatic colorectal cancer treatment Fruquintinib has been approved by the European Commission.

After getting US approval last November, Fruquintinib became the first Chinese original drug developed in Shanghai to enter the US and European markets, Hutchmed announced on Saturday.

Hong Kong-based Hutchmed's main research and development center is located in Shanghai.

Metastatic colorectal cancer is the world's third most common cancer, with over 1.9 million new cases and more than 900,000 deaths in 2022, according to data from the World Health Organization. In Europe, it is the second most common cancer, with about 538,000 new cases and 248,000 deaths that year. 

There will likely be 153,000 new cases and 53,000 deaths caused by metastatic colorectal cancer in the US this year, the WHO predicted.

Fruquintinib's sales applications in Japan and 10 other countries are being advanced, Yicai learned.

Biomedicine is one of the three forerunner industries that Shanghai focuses on developing. The city's biomedicine industry was worth over CNY900 billion (USD123.9 million) last year, up 4.9 percent from a year earlier. 

Over one-third of China's new drug overseas authorization deals with a transaction amount above USD500 million each have come from Shanghai in the past five years. Three of the five cellular therapies approved in the country come from the city.

One-third of China approvals for clinical trials of cellular immunotherapy are for Shanghai, with one-fourth of those for clinical trials of genetic treatment and one-fifth of clinical trials of stem cell treatment products also going to the city.

Editors: Shi Yi, Martin Kadiev