By Carlo Martuscelli

AstraZeneca PLC (AZN.LN) said Wednesday that China's medicines watchdog has approved the use of its drug Tagrisso as a first-line treatment for nonsmall cell lung cancer.

The U.K. pharmaceutical company said the medicine has been approved for patients with locally-advanced or metastatic cancer, and with tumors that showed certain genetic mutations, based on positive results from the phase 3 Flaura trial.

In the trial, Tagrisso used as a primary therapy was able to increase the amount of time patients lived without dying, or without having the disease progress, by a median of 18.9 months, versus 10.2 months for those being administered a standard alternative treatment.

Tagrisso was first approved in China in 2017 as a second-line treatment. With this approval, it will be able to be administered sooner after a patient is diagnosed.

Write to Carlo Martuscelli at carlo.martuscelli@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 04, 2019 02:40 ET (06:40 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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