Patrick Vallance

In March 2020, as the government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Vallance appeared alongside prime minister Boris Johnson and the Chief Medical Officer for England, Chris Whitty, in press briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.

In March 2018, Vallance left GSK and was appointed Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, replacing Mark Walport. In this role he leads the Government Office for Science, advising the prime minister and the cabinet. In 2018, he was one of nine scientific advisers who, in a paper in Nature, called for "inclusive, rigorous, transparent, and accessible information for policy makers" and supported the Evidence-Based Research Network, established in 2016, to "lobby for all proposals for new research to be supported by references to systematic reviews of relevant existing research".

From 2012 to 2018 Vallance served as president of research and development (R&D) at the multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

In 2006, in his mid-40s, he joined GSK as head of drug discovery. Four years later he became head of medicines discovery and development and in 2012 he was appointed head of research and development at GSK. Under his leadership at GSK, new medicines for cancer, asthma, autoimmune diseases and HIV infection were discovered and approved for use worldwide. He championed open innovation and novel industry-academic partnerships globally, and maintained a strong focus on the search for new antibiotics and treatments for tropical diseases.

From 1995 to 2002 he was professor at UCL Medical School, and professor of medicine from 2002 to 2006, and head of medicine. He was also registrar of the Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2005, as head of the division of medicine at UCL, he published a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, titled "A post-take ward round", in which he suggested that "reinvention of teams of doctors, nurses, therapists and social workers seems like an important task for general medicine".

In 1995, Vallance was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP). The following year he delivered the Goulstonian Lecture of the Royal College of Physicians, where he gave details of the connection between nitric oxide and blood pressure. In 1999 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), and in 2002 he was awarded the Graham Bull Prize for Clinical Science. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017. In the 2019 New Year Honours he was appointed Knight Bachelor.

In 1987, with Joe Collier, he set out to investigate whether human blood vessels demonstrated endothelium-dependent relaxation, a term coined in 1980 by Robert F. Furchgott and John V. Zawadzki after discovering that a large blood vessel would not relax when its single-layered inner most lining was removed. Furchgott and Zawadzki subsequently showed that the occurrence was mediated by what they called endothelium-derived relaxing factor, later found to be nitric oxide, and it was shortly shown to occur in a variety of animals. Using veins from the back of a human hand, Vallance and Collier reproduced Furchgott and Zawadzki's findings. Subsequently, their team showed that the human arterial vasculature is actively dilated by a continuous release of nitric oxide. In 1991, Vallance and Salvador Moncada published a paper on the role of nitric oxide in cirrhosis, proposing an association between the changes in blood flow in cirrhosis and the vasoactive properties of nitric oxide. The following year they reported that the plasma concentrations of asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) were elevated in people who were uraemic.

From 1986 to 1995 he taught at St George's Hospital Medical School, where his research concentrated on vascular biology and endothelial cell physiology. In 1995 he was appointed professor at UCL Medical School, and in 2002 he became head of its department of medicine.

From 1986 to 1995 he taught at St George's Hospital Medical School, where his research concentrated on vascular biology and endothelial cell physiology. Prior to the discovery of nitric oxide, it was believed that high blood pressure was usually a result of constrictor activity in blood vessels. Vallance performed studies which demonstrated the link between nitric oxide and blood pressure.

In December 1986, Vallance married Sophia Ann Dexter in the City of Westminster. They have three children; two sons, born January 1992 and March 1994, and one daughter born June 1997.

In 1978 he gained admission to study medicine at St George's, University of London, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1981 followed by a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1984. At St George's, he was a student of Joe Collier, professor of medicines policy. In addition to Collier, he has been inspired by a physician Tom Pilkington and former regius professor of physic at Cambridge, Sir Keith Peters.

Sir Patrick John Thompson Vallance FRS FMedSci FRCP (born March 1960) is a British physician, scientist, and clinical pharmacologist who has worked in both academia and industry and has since March 2018 been the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of the United Kingdom.

Patrick Vallance was born in March 1960 to Peter Vallance and Barbara Vallance, in south-west Essex, now part of Greater London. He has an older brother (born 1957) and a younger brother (born 1962). He was educated at the independent Truro School in Cornwall and his early aspiration was to become a palaeontologist.