Qilu Pharmaceutical's affordable lung cancer drug, known as Yiruike, has been released into the Chinese market by the State Food and Drug Administration, reports revealed on Monday.

The drug, which is also known as gefitinib, was developed by British-Swedish multinational biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca (LON: AZN) and was introduced to China in 2005. The generic release signifies the end of Iressa's decade-long monopoly and patent on the drug.

The generic drug that will be produced by Qilu will be equivalent in strength, dosage, quality and intended use to the brand-name product. According to Qilu, Iressa's patent protection expired in April 2016 and the drug's introduction into China has been welcomed across the board.

According to the National Cancer Centre, some 591,000 people die from lung cancer in China each year. As such, the drug could not come soon enough. Yiruike is a first-line medicine that will be used in targeted therapies such as non-small cell lung cancer by working against the epidermal growth factor receptor EGFR. For patients with non-small cell lung cancer – which accounts for 80% of lung cancer cases in China – it stops the mutation of EGFR that often leads to a proliferation of cells and forms fatal tumours.