Patrick John Thompson Vallance, Baron Vallance of Balham (born 17 March 1960), is a British physician, scientist, life peer, and clinical pharmacologist who served as Minister of State for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear from 2024 to 2026. He served as HM Government chief scientific adviser from 2018 to 2023. From 1986 to 1995, Vallance taught at St George's Hospital Medical School, where his research concentrated on vascular biology and endothelial cell physiology. In 1995, he was appointed a professor at UCL Medical School, and in 2002 he became head of UCL's department of medicine. From 2012 to 2018, he was president of Research and Development (R&D) at the global pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). He served as chairman of the Natural History Museum's board of trustees between 2022 and 2024. In March 2020, as HM Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Vallance appeared alongside Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England, in televised briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to public health.
Early life and education Patrick Vallance was born on 17 March 1960 to Peter Vallance and Barbara (née Thompson) in south-west Essex, now part of Greater London. His family later moved to Cornwall. Vallance was educated at Woodford Green Preparatory School and Buckhurst Hill County High School, and subsequently privately educated at Truro School. His early aspiration was to become a palaeontologist. Vallance studied medicine at St George's, University of London, from 1978, where he was taught by Joe Collier, professor of Medicines Policy, and from which he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1981 followed by a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree in 1984. In addition to Collier, he has been inspired by physician Tom Pilkington and former Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge Sir Keith Peters.
Career and research 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.
St George's Hospital From 1986 to 1995 Vallance taught at St George's Hospital Medical School, where his research concentrated on vascular biology and endothelial cell physiology. 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. 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 innermost 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.
University College Hospital From 1995 to 2002 he was a professor at UCL Medical School, then 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".
GlaxoSmithKline In 2006, in his mid-40s, Vallance 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, 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 focus on the search for new antibiotics and treatments for tropical diseases.
UK Government
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. In this role he led 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".
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