China-made cancer drug to go on sale in US after Americans travel to buy it

Global pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca said on Thursday it would start selling a cancer drug after coming under criticism for failing to bring it to the US market faster, prompting some Americans to fly to Shanghai to procure the potentially life-saving medicine first developed by China.

In recent months, desperate Americans have travelled to China to obtain the Chinese-made cancer drug that was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration but remained unavailable in the country for more than a year, according to a cancer-treatment awareness advocate who made the journey while his mother was battling the disease.

Developed by China’s Dizal Pharmaceutical, sunvozertinib is a targeted lung cancer drug designed to treat adults with an advanced form of the illness, offering another treatment option for patients.

“The drug was approved in China in 2023. The FDA approved it in July 2025,” Max Doppelt, chief executive of Patient Data Vault, a consultancy that connects cancer patients to clinical trials, wrote on social media on Wednesday.

“I know of at least 30 Americans who have made the same trip.”

Doppelt said that he travelled to Shanghai in January 2025 to obtain the drug after his mother’s lung cancer spread to her brain.

“A doctor told me, almost as an aside, that if she were Chinese she could buy it at a pharmacy.

“So I flew to Shanghai and came home with 26 boxes in my luggage. That was 19 months ago. My mom is still here, still working, and in her words has had an amazing three years.”

Doppelt added he had been reluctant to share his experience for fear of jeopardising his mother’s access to the medicine.

“But the problem matters more than my silence. These drugs need to be developed and available here, and that means FDA reform,” he noted.

The Washington Post first reported the story on Tuesday.

AstraZeneca said on Thursday that sunvozertinib would be commercially available in the United States under the brand name Zegfrovy, after securing worldwide rights to develop and sell the drug from China’s Dizal Pharmaceutical.

While the FDA granted an “accelerated approval” to the drug in July 2025, AstraZeneca announced its “exclusive license agreement” with China’s Dizal Pharmaceutical in July of this year.

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“AstraZeneca will acquire worldwide rights to develop and commercialise Zegfrovy,” the company said in a press release.

AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The deal included a US$600 million upfront payment to Dizal, with a further US$900 million potentially payable upon meeting specific regulatory clearances, as well as tiered royalties on global sales of Zegfrovy.

“The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory clearances,” the statement added.

Kyle Concannon, a doctor-scientist at the University of Colorado, said Washington needed to change its approach to developing and adopting new treatments.

“If the US wants to remain competitive and ensure patients don’t have to travel across the world for treatments, we need to both accept greater risk, recognising that for many patients the alternative is no treatment,” he wrote on social media.

Anne Wojcicki, CEO and founder of the 23andMe Research Institute, noted that China had transformed from a country known for producing raw materials into a global force in drug discovery, contrasting its position with that of the US in the early 2000s.

“The world has flipped. It’s remarkable how China has become a powerhouse in drug discovery and is now leading,” she said on social media.

She added that artificial intelligence would bring another shift in the industry, with large-scale data initiatives and “nimble regulatory oversight” key to driving progress.

China’s share of global early-stage drug-development programmes rose from 8 per cent in 2015 to 32 per cent in 2024, closing the gap with the US, whose share fell from 48 per cent to 37 per cent over the same period, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March 2026.