CRESCENT BIOPHARMA, INC.

To the Board of Directors and Shareholders of Crescent Biopharma, Inc.

Opinion on the Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying 2025 consolidated financial statements of Crescent Biopharma, Inc. and its subsidiaries and the 2024 financial statements of Crescent Biopharma, Inc. (collectively referred to as the "Company"), which comprise the balance sheet as of December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2024, and the related statements of operations and comprehensive loss, of convertible preferred shares and shareholders' equity (deficit) and of cash flows for the twelve months ended December 31, 2025 and for the period from September 19, 2024 (inception) through December 31, 2024, including the related notes (collectively referred to as the "consolidated financial statements"). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2024, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the twelve months ended December 31, 2025 and for the period from September 19, 2024 (inception) through December 31, 2024 in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Basis for Opinion

These consolidated financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s consolidated financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits of these consolidated financial statements in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audits to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matters

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that (i) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (ii) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of critical audit matters does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

External Research and Development Costs

As described in Note 2 to the financial statements, research and development costs are expensed as incurred. Research and development costs include salaries and bonuses, share-based compensation, employee benefits, and external costs of vendors and consultants engaged to conduct research and development activities. The Company’s external research and development expense for the twelve months ended December 31, 2025 was $36.1 million.

The principal consideration for our determination that performing procedures relating to external research and development costs is a critical audit matter is a high degree of auditor effort in performing procedures related to the Company’s external research and development costs.

Addressing the matter involved performing procedures and evaluating audit evidence in connection with forming our overall opinion on the financial statements. These procedures included, among others, testing external research and development costs on a sample basis by obtaining and agreeing the contractual terms of the agreement, amounts incurred to date, and estimates of work performed to date to the (i) underlying agreements with vendors engaged to conduct research and development; (ii) purchase orders; (iii) invoices received; (iv) underlying payments made for expenses incurred on the contracts; and (v) external confirmations or communications obtained by management from vendors.

/s/PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Boston, Massachusetts

February 26, 2026

We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2024.