Last night after the closing bell, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved for sale Novartis' (NYSE:NVS) drug, Afinitor, for treatment of renal cell cancer, the most common type of kidney-cancer. There is one caveat; the drug can only be prescribed to patients who did not respond to treatment for Pfizer's (NYSE:PFE) Sutent or Bayer's Nexavar or Onyx Pharmaceuticals's (NASDAQ:ONXX) Nexavar. Afinitor obstructs the protein that enables cancer cells to split and grow, and therefore Novartis is hoping to expand the use of the drug to treat other types of cancer. Novartis believes that the drug could generate over $1 billion in sales annually.

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