Gene ther­a­py pi­o­neer Kathy High has left Spark af­ter com­plet­ing $4.3B union with Roche

Kathy High ded­i­cat­ed the past sev­en years of her life shep­herd­ing ex­per­i­men­tal gene ther­a­pies she’s de­vel­oped at Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal of Philadel­phia to­ward the mar­ket as pres­i­dent and head of R&D at Spark Ther­a­peu­tics. Now that the biotech start­up is ful­ly ab­sorbed in­to Roche — with an FDA ap­proval, a $4.3 bil­lion buy­out and a promis­ing he­mo­phil­ia pro­gram to boast — she’s ready to move on.

Roche con­firmed her de­par­ture with End­points News and not­ed “she will take some well-de­served time off and then will be­gin a new chap­ter in a sab­bat­i­cal at a uni­ver­si­ty.”

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