What is Opdualag?

You may have heard of Opdualag, a new therapy that recently earned FDA approval for advanced melanoma. Opdualag, which combines two different immunotherapies into one medicine, is earning attention as an effective – and more easily tolerated – combination therapy. One that improves upon the effectiveness of existing immunotherapies without dramatically increasing side effects. This opens the doors of combination immunotherapy to more patients.

Opdualag is a new FDA-approved melanoma treatment that combines two different immunotherapies to help energize your immune system against melanoma. Once energized, your immune system attacks and destroys melanoma cells.

More specifically, Opdualag combines nivolumab with relatlimab. Both are drugs called checkpoint immunotherapies that work by releasing the brakes of the immune system, allowing it to attack cancer cells. Nivolumab (brand name Opdivo), approved first in melanoma in 2014, targets the immune checkpoint PD-1 and is widely used to treat melanoma and many other cancers. Relatlimab is a new drug targeting a different immune checkpoint, LAG-3, and is the first anti-LAG-3 therapy to earn FDA approval. 

What’s the big deal about Opdualag?

Researchers and advocates alike are excited about Opdualag because it represents a new chapter in melanoma combination immunotherapy, with a new first-in-class treatment (targeting LAG3 and PD-1). Previously, combination immunotherapy has proved to be more effective than single-agent therapy, but at the cost of dramatically higher rates of side effects that range from annoying to life threatening. These side effects can also require treatment delays or discontinuation altogether.

While Opdualag hasn’t been compared head-to-head in a clinical trial against the approved immunotherapy combination Yervoy + Opdivo (ipilimumab+nivolumab), it appears to be associated with fewer of these serious side effects. Less than 20% of patients who received Opdualag reported serious side effects, compared with nearly 60% patients who received Yervoy + Opdivo.  

Approved the use of Opdualag to treat adult and pediatric patients 12 years of age or older who have advanced melanoma:

Patients receive Opdualag intravenously (into a blood vein) every four weeks at your doctor’s office or an infusion clinic. Opdualag is infused over 30 minutes

• Stage III Melanoma that is unresectable (unable to be completely removed by surgery)
• Stage IV Melanoma also known as metastatic disease (melanoma cells that have spread to organs and other parts of the body)

Source: Melanoma Research Alliance