Pulling Back the Curtain
Katherine A. High, MD
In this edition, Katherine A. High, MD, talks about her work in gene therapy, her
love of reading, and the importance of “getting things done.” Dr. High is co-founder,
president, and chief scientific officer of Spark Therapeutics in Philadelphia.
did you have any mentors
who helped to shape your
career?
When I was doing my hem-
atology training at Yale Uni-
versity, I worked in the lab of
Edward J. Benz, Jr., MD. After
leaving his position at Yale, he
went on to serve as chairman of
the Departments of Medicine
at the University of Pittsburgh
and Johns Hopkins University,
as well as president and chief
executive officer of the Dana-
Farber Cancer Institute.
After working in his lab, I
sought his guidance when I con-
templated any move or change
in my career’s direction, and he
always offered sound advice.
Dr. High with her two
youngest children on
the day that Spark
Therapeutics rang the
opening bell at Nasdaq.
When you were a kid, what
did you want to be when
you grew up?
I wanted to be a chemist. When
I was 10 years old, Santa Claus
brought me a chemistry set for
Christmas, and I spent endless
hours doing the experiments
outlined in the accompanying
manual. It was so much fun!
And as I got older, I realized
that I loved studying, particularly
German history. So, I guess I also
imagined having a career as a his-
tory or language professor. I’d still
like to learn to speak German
fluently someday.
What was your first job?
The first job that I was paid for
10
ASH Clinical News
was working at a bookbinder
during the summer after my
senior year of high school in
Greensboro, North Carolina.
This bookbinder had state
contracts for rebinding older
textbooks.
That’s an unconventional
summer job – how did you
come to work there?
Because the textbooks needed to
be ready before the start of the
next school year, the summers
were a busy time for the book-
binder. It wasn’t a particularly
complicated interview process:
The company made their hiring
selections by administering a writ-
ten test and assessing our manual
dexterity; they made a composite
score from those tests and simply
drew a line under the names with
the highest scores. After I started
working there, I learned rapidly
that all that really mattered was
the manual dexterity.
Fortunately, it was one of
the few places hiring teenagers
that paid minimum wage, un-
like many of the typical teenager
jobs (lifeguarding, babysitting,
or bagging groceries) in those
days. So, bookbinding was a very
attractive option. As many first
jobs are, it was also a great learn-
ing experience.
After you graduated and
went to medical school,
What advice would you
give to early-career
hematologists and
trainees?
I would share something that a
senior professor told me early in
my career: If you’re really trying
to solve a problem (in my case,
that’s finding a gene therapy for
hemophilia), remember that you
own all the problems – not just
the problems that you like, or
the problems that are most in-
teresting to you, but all of them.
If it’s in the way, you own it. It
has shaped how I tackle difficult
problems in my research.
What career
accomplishment are you
most proud of?
For the last 25 years, my career
has focused on gene therapy for
inherited diseases. December
2017 was an important month
in my career: First, in early
December, the clinical study of
gene therapy for hemophilia that
our company sponsored was
published in The New England
Journal of Medicine, along with
an accompanying editorial. The
circulating levels of clotting fac-
tor that we achieved allowed the
June 2018