Af­ter a decade, Vi­iV CSO John Pot­tage says it's time to step down — and he's hand­ing the job to long­time col­league Kim Smith

Vi­iV Health­care has al­ways been some­thing unique in the glob­al drug in­dus­try.

Owned by Glax­o­SmithK­line and Pfiz­er — with GSK in the lead as ma­jor­i­ty own­er — it was cre­at­ed 10 years ago in a time of deep tur­moil for the field as some­thing in­de­pen­dent of the phar­ma gi­ants, but with ac­cess to lots of in­fra­struc­tur­al sup­port on de­mand. While R&D at the moth­er ship in­side GSK was sour­ing, a ra­zor-fo­cused Vi­iV pro­vid­ed a rare bright spot, chal­leng­ing Gilead on a lu­cra­tive front in de­liv­er­ing new com­bi­na­tions that re­quire few­er ther­a­pies with a more eas­i­ly tol­er­at­ed reg­i­men.

They kept a mas­sive num­ber of peo­ple alive who would oth­er­wise have been fac­ing a death sen­tence. And they made mon­ey.

And through­out, John Pot­tage has been the chief sci­en­tif­ic and chief med­ical of­fi­cer.

Un­til now.

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