China has recently approved the nation's first homegrown nine-valent human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV), said the domestic developer Xiamen Innovax Biotech in a statement released on Wednesday.

It protects against nine types of HPV infection and marks the world's second such vaccine capable of doing so. The first was developed by American pharmaceutical giant Merck, which was approved by US drug regulators in 2014 and Chinese drug regulators in 2018.

The new vaccine is jointly by the company and Xiamen University. Both institutions are based in Xiamen in East China's Fujian province. They also created the nation's first two-valent HPV vaccine, which gained market authorization near the end of 2019.