Why the Pentagon Keeps Funding This Small Cap (Nasdaq: MDWD)
WSW, NY, September 22nd, 2026, FinanceWire
On September 22, MediWound disclosed that the Department of War had added to a program it has been backing since long before most investors had heard of the company. What it keeps buying says more than the amount does.
When a burn unit fills past capacity, the first thing to run out is not medicine. It is surgeons. A deep burn leaves behind a layer of dead tissue called eschar, and nothing underneath it can heal until that layer comes off. For decades, taking it off has meant an operating room, anesthesia and a surgeon with a blade. In a single-patient case that is routine. In a mass-casualty event it is the bottleneck everything else backs up behind: operating rooms fill, surgical teams work past exhaustion, and patients wait their turn while the risk of infection climbs.
The U.S. government has been funding a way around that bottleneck for more than a decade. Not once. Repeatedly, through successive administrations and across two separate federal agencies. On September 22, MediWound disclosed that Washington had put in more.
The recipient is not a defense contractor. It does not build drones, radar or munitions. It makes a topical gel, derived from an enzyme found in pineapple stems, that dissolves the dead tissue from a severe burn in four hours without a scalpel. The company is MediWound (Nasdaq: MDWD), and the latest award from the Department of War is $3.3 million.
The same program stood at $14.4 million at the end of 2023, after an earlier award. The Department added to it again in 2025. This award brings the total program budget to $21.8 million. Running alongside it is a separate ten-year BARDA contract, announced in April, awarded to commercial partner Vericel (Nasdaq: VCEL) and valued at up to $197 million against a $35 million base period.
Set against all of that, MediWound carried a market capitalization of roughly $170 million as of September 21, 2026. So the question is what Washington keeps seeing.
Why Washington Keeps Coming Back
The gel is NexoBrid, and it is not experimental. It is an FDA-approved biologic, given as a single four-hour application that clears the eschar while leaving healthy skin intact. It works at the bedside. It does not need an operating room, and it does not compete for the scarcest resource in the building.
Governments understood this before the market did. NexoBrid is approved in 45 countries, sits in the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile, and has been supported by BARDA across successive contract cycles.
The newest funding covers a critical development step between an approved hospital product and a field-ready one. NexoBrid ships refrigerated and isstored between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius. In a burn center with a pharmacy fridge, that is unremarkable. In a forward aid station running on a generator, it is the whole problem. The money carries a room-temperature-stable formulation through an Investigational New Drug submission to the FDA, covering CMC development, in-house cGMP manufacturing and clinical batches. Chief Executive Ofer Gonen described the aim as enabling “the use of non-surgical enzymatic debridement in battlefield and other austere settings, where access to surgical capabilities and cold-chain infrastructure may be limited.”
The development funding is non-dilutive to MediWound shareholders. Because the program sits inside Vericel's existing North American license, a field formulation that reaches approval would also arrive with its commercial partner already attached.
The World They Are Buying For
Army medical writers have been unusually direct about why this capability is becoming more valuable. In the July-August 2025 Military Review, Army University Press published an assessment that evacuating casualties to an operating room inside the traditional Golden Hour “will be a foregone luxury in large-scale combat operations and other austere operational environments.” The planning factors those authors set out stretch to thirty-six hours before a casualty reaches an aid station that has no surgical capability at all.
There Is Already a Business Here
NexoBrid already has a growing commercial base. Vericel reported record NexoBrid revenue for the second quarter of 2026, up 33% year over year, and raised full-year burn care guidance to $46 million to $50 million.
MediWound is also advancing EscharEx in the global Phase III VALUE trial for venous leg ulcers, with an interim sample-size reassessment and completion of enrollment expected by the end of the first quarter of 2027.
Washington has backed NexoBrid across multiple administrations, budget cycles and agencies. The pattern is consistent: it has funded an approved product, purchased it for emergency preparedness and paid to make it deployable in settings where surgical capacity and cold-chain infrastructure are limited.
That is an unusual kind of due diligence, conducted in public over years by a customer with no interest in the share price.
Recent News Highlights from MediWound (Nasdaq: MDWD)
Independent DSMB Recommends MediWound’s EscharEx Phase III VALUE Study Continue Without Modification
Newly Published U.S. Expert Consensus Aligns with MediWound’s Strategy for Chronic Wound Debridement
MediWound Reports BARDA Contract Award to Vericel for NexoBrid Valued at up to $197 Million
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