SAN DIEGO, Calif. — October 6, 2026 — Coastar Therapeutics today announced that Founder and CEO Eddie Chung has been named to BioSpace’s 2026 40 Under 40, recognizing emerging leaders who are helping shape the future of the life sciences industry.

The recognition highlights Chung’s leadership in building Coastar around one of the key challenges in genetic medicine: delivering therapeutic payloads effectively to the cells and tissues where they are needed, while reducing the complexity and cost of treatment.

Under Chung’s leadership, Coastar has developed its proprietary Erythrocyte Derived Membrane (EDM) platform, a biomimetic delivery technology designed to help genetic medicines evade immune clearance and reach intended targets. The company is applying the platform across mRNA, DNA and viral vector delivered therapies.

“Genetic medicine has tremendous potential to transform the treatment of serious diseases, but many of today’s therapies remain highly complex and expensive,” said Chung. “At Coastar, our mission is to develop delivery technologies that can help make these medicines more effective, scalable and affordable. I’m honored by this recognition, which reflects the dedication and progress of the entire Coastar team.”

A major focus of Coastar’s work is in vivo cell therapy, including approaches that could generate therapeutic cells directly inside the patient and reduce reliance on complex ex vivo manufacturing. The company believes that more efficient in vivo delivery could help expand access to advanced therapies that today are available to only a limited number of patients.

Coastar’s lead program, CTX-001, is being developed as an in vivo CAR-T therapy for refractory systemic lupus erythematosus and other severe autoimmune diseases. The company is also exploring broader applications of its delivery platform across genetic medicine and gene therapy.

Chung founded Coastar with the goal of addressing what BioSpace described in its profile as the “last micron” challenge in genetic medicine — efficiently getting a therapeutic payload to the right biological target. His recognition in the 2026 40 Under 40 reflects both Coastar’s technical progress and its broader ambition to help make precision genetic therapies more widely accessible.

About Coastar Therapeutics

Coastar Therapeutics Inc., is a San Diego based company developing biological payload delivery technologies for cancer and gene therapies. The company’s proprietary gene delivery technology enables effective, precision targeted and highly scalable in vivo delivery of genetic medicine, including DNA, RNA as well as viral vectors. The company is working with a number of global partners to develop next generation therapeutic products.  For more information about Coastar Therapeutics and its mission, visit coastartherapeutics.com.