Luciana Preger credits being exposed to her father’s work at a young age with helping inform her own career in medicine. Luciana is a physician with more than 20 years of experience in pharma and she came to Gilead to help transform treatments for people living with cancer. 

“As a child, I loved the opportunity to go on rounds with my father at the hospital in Rio de Janeiro and witness the bedside connections he made with patients,” says Luciana, Vice President, Global Medical Affairs, Oncology. “To this day, I carry with me the emotion that I saw on those rounds at a young age. I don’t want to ever forget that.”

Improving outcomes and access to medicine for people living with disease drives her work. In fact, it was Gilead’s legacy of expanding global access to life-changing medicines that first attracted Luciana to the company, as she longed to be in an environment where she could play a bigger role in bridging the gap between scientific innovation and patient care. 

“To truly transform the way cancer is treated, oncology advances must be built on a foundation of equitable care,” she says. “There is no scientific innovation without clear access to it, and access to care is at the forefront of all our work at Gilead.”

Luciana’s career has spanned three continents, from her home country of Brazil to France and the U.S. To have a greater impact in oncology, she felt it was a unique opportunity to be in the Silicon Valley to collaborate directly with renowned leaders working on the cutting edge of cancer research and treatment.

Before coming to Gilead, she worked with teams that developed more than 10 oncology therapies — most of them have demonstrated survival benefits in multiple cancers.

These days Luciana is most excited to talk about Gilead’s growing oncology portfolio. More than 30,000 patients have been reached with one of the company’s medicines, and it continues to explore where the medicine can have the greatest impact for people across many difficult-to-treat tumor types.

In Luciana’s role she oversees the strategic direction of Global Medical Affairs initiatives and priorities in oncology, ensuring they help advance scientific understanding of the company’s therapies. Her team drives the dissemination of clinical data by helping review and publish the findings, engaging with key opinion leaders, supporting external research and creating educational programs to inform clinical practices.

All in all, Luciana is pleased to be at a company that is committed to helping people who need its medicines most. “What we do is meaningful. We play a role in helping to prolong life and addressing the unmet needs of people living with cancer worldwide,” she says. “Ultimately, we want to achieve cure and take back possibility in the face of cancer.”