The chief executive of Baidu has said the Chinese search engine must reform or face “bankruptcy in 30 days”, following a scandal over an advertisement for cancer therapy.

“Our values have become distorted, and financial performance has become more important to us than user experience,” Robin Litold employees a day after Cyberspace Administration, China’s internet regulator, imposed controls on medical advertising on the site.

The search engine has been under heightened scrutiny following the death of a 21-year-old student from a rare form of cancer in April. His parents said he used Baidu to search for alternative treatments, and paid Rmb200,000 ($31,000) for “biological immunotherapy” offered by a Beijing hospital. They added that the experimental treatment had no effect and led him to miss opportunities to use proven treatments.