Windward Bio, a Basel, Switzerland company founded about two years ago, filed for a US initial public offering on October 23, planning to list on Nasdaq under the symbol WWB, Reuters reported. Jefferies, TD Cowen, Piper Sandler and UBS are the underwriters. The company develops long-lasting antibody treatments for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and inflammatory skin conditions, designed to reduce how often patients need injections.
Its lead candidate, WIN378, is an antibody blocking thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), a protein that triggers inflammatory pathways in asthma and other respiratory diseases; a second program, WIN027, sits alongside it. Endpoints News reported that the two clinical-stage assets come from Kelun-Biotech, Harbour BioMed and Qyuns. Windward has secured up to $365 million from investors including OrbiMed, Novo Holdings, Omega Funds and Blue Owl Healthcare Opportunities; Novo Holdings holds a 14.5 percent pre-IPO stake and funds managed by Blue Owl Capital 5.9 percent, Reuters reported from the filing.
No size, price range or target valuation for the offering was disclosed in the available reporting, so the filing is a statement of intent rather than a priced financing. Its interest is structural: a European shell of a company, built on China-derived clinical assets, seeking a US listing days after Treasury proposed adding biotechnology to the outbound investment regime (see the October 22 Treasury story). Whether the registration proceeds on a normal timetable is an early market test of how that proposal lands on cross-border biotech structures that are already built.