Prior to taking up senior positions with the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and later in the UK Government, Vallance spent several years in medical research.[11]
From 1986 to 1995 he taught at St George's Hospital Medical School,[1][10] where his research concentrated on vascular biology and endothelial cell physiology.[12][13] Prior to the discovery of the involvement 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.[14]
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.[2][15] Subsequently, their team showed that the human arterial vasculature is actively dilated by a continuous release of nitric oxide.[13][16] 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.[17] The following year they reported that the plasma concentrations of asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) were elevated in people who were uraemic.[18][19]
From 1995 to 2002 he was a professor at UCL Medical School, then Professor of Medicine from 2002 to 2006, and head of medicine.[1][20] He was also registrar of the Academy of Medical Sciences.[13] 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".[21][22][23]
In 2006, in his mid-40s, he joined GSK as head of drug discovery.[24][25] Four years later he became head of medicines discovery and development, and in 2012 he was appointed head of research and development at GSK.[26][27][28][29][30] Under his leadership, 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,[13][31][29] and maintained a focus on the search for new antibiotics and treatments for tropical diseases.[13][32]
UK Government
[edit]Vallance in a British Government photograph; a ministerial red box is in the background at left
In March 2018, Vallance left GSK, and on 4 April 2018 he began his five-year tenure as Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, replacing the interim officeholder Chris Whitty.[33] In this role he led the Government Office for Science, advising the prime minister and the cabinet.[34][35] 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".[36]
In March 2020, as the government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Vallance appeared alongside prime minister Boris Johnson and the Chief Medical Officer for the UK, Chris Whitty, in televised briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic.[7][8] During some March 2020 TV interviews, he made comments interpreted by some as advocating for a "herd immunity" approach.[37] However, in his second written statement to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, he stated that he mispoke while trying to explain a "technically difficult concept", that interviews given that same day demonstrate that he was not advocating for such a policy, and the later published transcripts of SAGE demonstrate the no such policy was being considered or advocated by government scientific advisors including Vallance. Vallance stated in the same statement that he "regrets" the his use of the term "herd immunity" in those instances. [38]
In September, it emerged that Vallance owns a deferred bonus of 43,111 shares worth £600,000 in GlaxoSmithKline, a company which was working on developing a COVID vaccine.[39] This led to claims of a potential conflict of interest, as Vallance could be seen to have a financial interest in pushing for a vaccine-based response to the pandemic whether or not this is objectively the best approach.[40] Then Health Secretary Matt Hancock denied that this was the case, with a government spokesperson stating that, "Upon his appointment, appropriate steps were taken to manage the Government Chief Scientific Adviser's interests in line with advice provided at the time. The GCSA has no input into contractual and commercial decisions on vaccine procurement which are taken by Ministers following a robust cross-Government approvals regime".[41]
After a televised briefing alongside Johnson and Whitty on 31 October, where a second "lockdown" was introduced for England, Vallance was criticised for showing two slides – projecting hospital admissions and deaths – which were later reissued with worst-case figures revised downward.[42][43][44] Five days later, a statement from the Office for Statistics Regulation called for greater transparency in published data relating to the pandemic, including publication of data sources and modelling assumptions; the statement did not refer to any specific presentation but was linked by reporters to the 31 October briefing.[45][46]
Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation
On 5 July 2024, Vallance was named as Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology by prime minister Keir Starmer following the Labour party's win in the 2024 general election. He also received a peerage in order for him to sit in the House of Lords.[47][48]
^ ab"Career profile; Patrick Vallance". St George's Alumni Newsletter; The magazine for Alumni and friends of St George’s, University of London. Issue 16 (spring 2013), p.18-19.
^Barba, Gianvincenzo; Mullen, Michael J.; Donald, Anne; MacAllister, Raymond J. (1999). "Determinants of the Response of Human Blood Vessels to Nitric Oxide Donors In Vivo". Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. 289 (3): 1662–1668. ISSN0022-3565. PMID10336566.
