China’s first domestically developed nine-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been approved for marketing by the National Medical Products Administration, breaking the more than decade-long market dominance held by foreign products, CCTV News reported on Wednesday.
The vaccine, Cecolin 9, was jointly developed by the Xiang An Biomedicine Laboratory, Xiamen University and Wantai BioPharm. Its approval makes China the second country in the world – only after the US – with the capability to independently supply high-valency HPV vaccines, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
Since 2019, the vaccine has been tested in five clinical trials nationwide that have enrolled more than 11,000 volunteers aged 9 to 45, obtaining solid research data, the Xiamen Daily reported.
The research team also developed China’s first domestically made two-valent HPV vaccine in 2019. In 2021, the two-valent HPV vaccine received prequalification approval from the World Health Organization (WHO) and has since entered the markets of 21 countries, Xinhua reported.
HPV vaccines are commonly used to prevent cervical cancer in women and genital cancers and warts in both men and women, the CCTV report said. Cervical cancer was the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide in 2022, according to the WHO. China made free HPV vaccination accessible to approximately 40 percent of girls aged 13-14 in 2024 as part of its ongoing work to tackle cervical cancer, according to the National Health Commission.
