Spark co-founder Kathy High joins a longtime collaborator at AskBio, helping steer Bayer's gene therapy push
Kathy High has re-emerged in the gene therapy space just as unexpectedly as she left Spark Therapeutics close to a year ago.
Her newest title will be president, therapeutics at AskBio, the biotech “race horse” that Bayer has just bought for $2 billion cash to build a cell and gene therapy unit around.
On the surface, the circumstances are not unlike Spark, which was getting absorbed into Roche following a $4.3 billion buyout. High, 68, was credited for both steering Luxturna toward an approval for a rare inherited eye disease caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene, setting up gene therapy research in hemophilia A and leading a Phase I/II trial for hemophilia B.
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