On Friday, Novartis (NVS) stated that it had won FDA approval for Rydapt, which is a drug developed to treat patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia -- AML. The catch is that the drug treats AML with a genetic mutation type known as FLT3. Another key item to notice is that it had been approved as a combination therapy together with chemotherapy. 

Rydapt in combination with chemotherapy saw some pretty significant results. That is because the drug combo treatment extended patient's lives by 74.7 months in a phase 3 clinical trial. On the other hand, placebo was only able to extend lives by 25.6 months. Acute Myeloid Leukemia accounts for about 25% of all adult leukemias. 

Novartis is a big pharmaceutical company, but that's not to say that every FDA approval doesn't help. Analysts expect that Rydapt could produce up to $260 million in sales by 2019. This will be a nice boost for the company which has done well to improve its earnings over time. Just this past quarter it beat expectations for the quarter with $11.54 billion in revenue.