Enobosarm GLP-1 Trial: 239-Patient Muscle Study Closes Enrollment

What the enobosarm GLP-1 trial is testing

A proof-of-concept study evaluating enobosarm in people already being treated with a GLP-1 receptor agonist for weight loss appeared in an updated ClinicalTrials.gov record dated September 4, 2026. The record, registered as NCT07446998 with Veru Inc. listed as sponsor, describes a phase 2 trial with 239 participants and a status of active, not recruiting. Its stated primary objective is to assess the effect of enobosarm on total body weight.

The study title goes further than the primary objective, naming total body weight, physical function and safety as the outcomes under evaluation. That combination is the interesting part. A weight-loss trial that measures physical function is not asking only whether the number on the scale moves; it is asking what happens to the person's capacity to do things while it moves.

GLP-1 receptor agonists are medicines that mimic glucagon-like peptide-1, a gut hormone involved in insulin secretion, gastric emptying and appetite signalling. Semaglutide and the dual GIP/GLP-1 agonist tirzepatide are the best-known examples. Nothing in the registry summary provided identifies which specific agonist participants were taking, so that detail should not be assumed.

Why muscle and physical function became a GLP-1 research question

Weight lost through any large energy deficit is not purely fat. Clinicians and researchers have been debating for several years how much lean tissue comes off during incretin-driven weight loss, whether it matters clinically, and whether it can be blunted. The debate has produced a small industry of investigational add-on agents aimed at body composition rather than body weight, and enobosarm's appearance in a GLP-1 combination trial belongs squarely to that trend.

This article does not resolve that debate, and neither does the registry record. What the record establishes is that a sponsor has committed a 239-participant phase 2 study to the question and has now closed enrollment. Until results are posted or published, the existence of the trial is the news; its findings are not yet knowable.

Physical function endpoints matter to readers tracking a protocol for a practical reason. Scale weight is trivially easy to record and lean mass is not. Trials that build in functional measures are, in effect, testing whether the thing people notice in daily life tracks with the thing the scale reports.

Readers following the comparator arms in these registry entries often land here from our semaglutide dosage calculator, which handles the arithmetic of a provider-set regimen rather than the regimen itself.

Nature's daily briefing on September 3, 2026 reported that mice given GLP-1 obesity drugs showed slowed signs of ageing and outperformed calorie-restricted mice on cognitive tasks.

What is enobosarm, and is it a peptide?

Enobosarm is a selective androgen receptor modulator, or SARM — a non-steroidal small molecule designed to act on androgen receptors with more tissue selectivity than testosterone itself. It is not a peptide, and it is not administered the way the injectable peptides this audience tracks are. Readers who follow peptide protocols should treat it as a separate drug class that happens to be under study in the same clinical space.

It is also investigational. Enobosarm is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for any indication, and its use in combination with a GLP-1 receptor agonist exists at present only inside registered clinical trials. SARMs sold outside that setting are unapproved products, and the FDA has previously warned consumers about them.

That distinction is worth holding onto because trial registrations are frequently misread as product launches. A phase 2 record with 239 participants is a hypothesis being tested, not a therapy being recommended.

Because functional and safety endpoints are what these trials are built around, side-effect logging with dates and context is the closest a reader can get to that kind of record at home.

The rest of the week's incretin trial registry updates

The enobosarm record was not the only notable registry activity. Eli Lilly and Company's TOGETHER AMPLIFY-PsO study, NCT06857942, is recruiting 200 participants for a phase 4 evaluation of adding tirzepatide to ixekizumab therapy in people with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis and obesity or overweight with at least one weight-related comorbidity, over a period of up to 12 months.

On the liver side, the University of New Mexico is recruiting eight participants for an early phase 1 study, NCT06934642, examining tirzepatide's effect on markers of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease across 12 months of treatment with quarterly visits, blood draws and liver ultrasound. Novo Nordisk's phase 3 semaglutide NASH trial, NCT04822181, remains active and not recruiting with 1,205 participants and a roughly five-year duration involving up to 21 clinic visits.

Two comparator studies round out the picture. Shanghai Minwei Biotechnology is recruiting 240 adults with type 2 diabetes into a phase 2 trial of its oral candidate MWN109, NCT07801820, using oral semaglutide as an active control and percent change in HbA1c at week 20 as the primary endpoint. Boehringer Ingelheim's phase 1 imaging study NCT05202353 is comparing BI 456906 with semaglutide on glucagon and GLP-1 receptor occupancy in the liver and pancreas in 29 adults with obesity, using injectable tracers across 17 weeks.

If the difference between a trial regimen and a personal regimen is unclear, our glossary entry on what a protocol is spells out the terms used throughout this article.

How to read a ClinicalTrials.gov status line

Registry vocabulary trips people up, and the labels carry real information. "Recruiting" means the study is still taking participants. "Active, not recruiting" means enrollment has closed and enrolled participants are still being followed or treated — the stage the enobosarm study has now reached. Neither status says anything about whether the treatment is working.

Phase labels describe purpose, not quality. An early phase 1 study with eight participants, like the New Mexico MASLD trial, is exploratory and cannot establish effectiveness. A phase 2 proof-of-concept trial tests whether an effect appears at all and how safety looks in a modest group. A phase 3 trial of 1,205 people, like the semaglutide NASH study, is powered to support regulatory decisions. A phase 4 study runs after approval, in clinical practice conditions.

Enrollment figures on registry records are targets or actuals depending on status, and completion dates shift routinely. None of these entries constitutes a published result, and none has been peer reviewed.

According to the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT07446998, the phase 2 proof-of-concept study sponsored by Veru Inc. enrolled 239 participants and is listed as active, not recruiting.

Preclinical signals and what happens next

Separately, Nature's daily briefing on September 3, 2026 highlighted research reporting that mice given GLP-1 obesity drugs showed slowed signs of ageing and performed better on cognitive tasks than mice on an equivalent calorie-restricted diet. That is animal work, and rodent findings on ageing and cognition have a long history of not transferring to humans. It is nonetheless a further example of research probing whether incretin effects extend beyond the weight itself.

The review literature is moving the same direction. A review in Cell Reports Medicine by Tavaglione and Loomba surveys GLP-1 mono, dual and triple agonists in MASH-related fibrosis, and a review in Current Atherosclerosis Reports covers oral incretin-based therapies for weight management. Both are secondary literature summarizing existing evidence rather than new trial data.

For the enobosarm trial, the next milestone is either a results posting on the registry, a conference presentation, or a peer-reviewed publication. Until one of those arrives, the honest summary is that a 239-participant phase 2 study of a SARM added to GLP-1 therapy has finished enrolling, and the answer to the question it was built to ask is not yet public.

Eli Lilly's phase 4 study of tirzepatide added to ixekizumab is recruiting 200 participants over up to 12 months, according to the registry entry for TOGETHER AMPLIFY-PsO.