Pharma CFO plans for telehealth expansion

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Sam Backenroth is concocting a recipe for Aspargo Labs’ finance function.

Backenroth joined the company, which develops liquid oral suspensions for medicines that treat conditions like erectile dysfunction, in January. Aspargo Labs has big growth plans, both for its products and geographic markets.

Backenroth has lots of experience leading public pharmaceutical companies. He told us he’ll be tasked with “building out the financial and operational side” at Aspargo.

CFO Brew recently spoke with Backenroth about that, as well as the company’s growth plans and where he fits into those efforts as finance chief.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Aspargo Labs filed an S-1 with the SEC in January 2025, and you joined the company roughly one year later. Is an IPO still in the works, and is that one of your main objectives as CFO?

I don’t think I can be direct with regard to that answer, but I certainly have the public markets experience that you would want in a company that potentially has aspirations for being public. So I’ve been a public company CFO for a little over 13 years, all in the pharmaceutical space. This is a natural fit for me, for a company that has a science background, and we are all drug developers, but we are now taking products, enhancing them, and bringing them to commercialization in a very accelerated manner.

What are some of your priorities over the next six to 12 months?

The focus is really on building out the financial and operational side [similar to] a lot of things that I’ve done in the past, [such as] building out internal controls, finance operations, working through the 2025 annual audit, accounting process and procedures, policies and procedures. [We’re] preparing the company for, ultimately, scale-up and commercialization. I think that’s the big key over here.

We have not announced anything yet, but we are in the process of launching our product in the US with a large telehealth provider…One of my key focuses here is making sure that the organization is ready for that scale-up and ready for rapid commercialization with that entity.

I’m wondering how much you, as CFO, are thinking about the balance between go-to-market activities with research and development—which I assume is capital intensive with much longer timelines before you see any kind of revenue.

I think ultimately that’s an ebb and flow based on the corporate strategy and the corporate plan. We are already commercializing in several countries in Europe, including Germany, the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands…and those sales continue to grow month over month, year over year. Things are going really well there. We have yet to really launch in a big way in the US.

With regard to R&D, we’ve got a very long list and product roadmap. Because we are really focused on the telehealth market, our next products are going to be in the spaces where they do the most sales. We’re not going to reinvent the wheel; we’re going to go after markets that are already established. And so our next two products are going to be in the weight loss space with oral spray suspension…and then behind that is going to be oral spray for hair loss. We’re going to be following, essentially, the three major products that are being sold in telehealth platforms right now.

What’s your role in internal discussions of what products to focus on next?

I’ve been through a lot of drug development, so I do have secondary [knowledge] on strategy. But I think my primary role, where I take lead on, is the economics of that. So being able to take a product [and] model out the cost benefit. [That includes] the expense of being able to take a product from point A to point B. We do clinical trials here, so we are not formulating and then just launching products. We’re actually doing the formulation, taking the product, and testing it in people to see what the pharmacokinetics looks like, to see what the safety looks like, and things like that. My job in those things would be to model out each specific indication. What is the expense to get it to market? And then what does the revenue look like on the other side? Then [I] look at what the cost benefit would be.