(Reuters) - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co on Thursday said its experimental drug brivanib failed in a late-stage trial to match Nexavar, a cancer treatment sold by Bayer AG and Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc, in prolonging the lives of patients with advanced liver cancer

The Bristol-Myers drug is an oral once-daily treatment that blocks receptors to VEGF, a protein involved in many cancers, and also blocks enzymes called FGFR tyrosine kinases that have been linked to cancer.

The company said it will continue other trials of the medicine in kidney cancer and against other tumor types.

Shares of Bristol-Myers were down slightly in after-hours trading from their closing price of $36.15 Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting By Ransdell Pierson)