Workshop: Designing Clinical Trials for Age-Related Functional Decline

Workshop led by Dr. Shalender Bhasin exploring pivotal trial design strategies for function-promoting and multimorbidity-targeted therapeutics, and the role of academia-industry collaboration in bringing them to practice.

Many therapies are known to improve muscle mass or address specific disease mechanisms, but proving meaningful gains in overall function across multimorbid older adults remains a major challenge. Designing trials that capture these outcomes often requires composite endpoints, multimorbidity-aware inclusion criteria, and function-centered frameworks.

Clinicians at the Boston Pepper Center, led by Dr. Bhasin, have conducted some of the largest and most influential studies in this field. His TRAVERSE testosterone trial (over 5,000 older adults) serves as a model for how rigorous design can bridge mechanistic and functional outcomes in complex aging populations.