Read the Conversation
Conversation highlights:
- The Gulf is a strategically attractive region due to its fast access, broad coverage, ambitious public health agendas, and governments that prioritise innovation without compromising speed, price, or quality.
- Re-engineering of healthcare systems and open government collaboration are shaping Blueprints for sustainable healthcare models.
- Disease-area needs are rising, notably HIV, hepatitis B/D, and oncology, making the region a priority for expanding access, strengthening authority partnerships, and supporting public-health goals.
- 2025 was a year of strong growth and operational consolidation, especially following the establishment of Gilead’s Saudi affiliate and regional HQ, with continued focus on regulatory compliance and efficient operations.
- Gilead’s portfolio and pipeline aim to reduce disease and treatment burden, advancing long-acting HIV treatments, pursuing cures for hepatitis B, expanding cell therapies in oncology, and addressing rare diseases like PBC.
- Future talent must be adaptable, collaborative, and comfortable with constant change, able to work with diverse stakeholders, maintain focus amid uncertainty, and build trust-based relationships.
EF: Could you summarise how 2025 has been so far and what your priorities are for 2026?
VP: 2025 has been a year of growth and consolidation for us. The company is now as large as it has ever been in our core business. We are fortunate that this comes from being able to reach more patients across the disease areas in which we work, which means we have been able to provide healthcare professionals with tools they find useful and that have been beneficial to the patients they look after. In some cases, diseases that without treatment would be life-threatening have been managed adequately. In other cases, we have offered patients the opportunity to be cured of diseases that, in their natural course, would lead to death. For all of this, it has been a very rewarding year.
It has also been a year of consolidation, as in 2024, we opened an affiliate and an RHQ in Saudi Arabia. As with any new operation, we have been ironing out the things we need to get right throughout 2025. The machine is well-oiled now, and we are in a good spot, having learned as we went along. We are in a strong position to continue reaching patients and making the business flourish.
As we look ahead to 2026, one environmental factor we have been watching and adapting to is the regulatory landscape in Saudi Arabia, given our setup. We have been looking at how to establish a regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia. We have done that, and now we are ensuring compliance with Saudi regulations and that the regional headquarters plays its intended role. This journey will continue into 2026 to ensure we do it well.
Going into 2026, we believe that across the disease areas in which we work, and given the epidemiology, we will continue to strengthen and consolidate our relationships with health authorities across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf countries. This is so that when clinicians decide to treat, they understand how our medicines may benefit their patients and can make an informed choice. But also upstream of that, we will keep partnering with public health authorities to support them and help them achieve their public health goals in these disease areas.
EF: How do you define the strategic importance of this region to Gilead?
VP: Across the Gulf, governments are very ambitious for their citizens. They want to provide the best care with few barriers to access, and they want to do that quickly. Speed of access and broad access are highly attractive to the pharmaceutical industry, making the region a place where it makes sense to invest and ensuring that countries can access our medicines quickly and in a way that enables broad use.
If we think about the disease areas in which we work, especially viral infections and oncology, these are unfortunately areas with increasing numbers. For example, HIV incidence is rising in the Gulf, there is a sizable population living with hepatitis B, some patients are still living with hepatitis C, and a distinct population living with hepatitis delta. Because we have medicines across these infections, we can intervene and bring tools of great value to healthcare professionals.
As populations age and as lifestyle and environmental conditions change, we are also seeing a greater incidence of cancer across both liquid and solid tumours. We can support and help address these needs, whether by offering the possibility of a cure or by extending life with quality.
It also represents an opportunity to advance healthcare solutions. I was recently in Abu Dhabi, and the way the government thinks strategically about health, about what health should look like five years from now, and how to get there, is something that is music to our ears. They are being very innovative in their approach, and it would be great if governments everywhere thought the same way.
Saudi Arabia is also looking at how to attract companies, not just in healthcare but across industries, and they are doing it with purpose. They are clear about whom they want to attract and why, and how they want those companies to operate in the Kingdom. Again, this is something we welcome and something we look forward to partnering on. All of this supports strong investment from the pharmaceutical industry, specifically for us.
When it comes to the iron triangle, that is a real differentiator for the region. One of the things we need to convey to authorities is that this triad, and its existence, truly sets the region apart. Our request or warning is not to compromise any of those three points, because that would reduce the region’s differentiation and its attractiveness. As it stands now, the region is extremely attractive.
EF: How do you balance priorities across such a large and diverse region?
VP: I really love the diversity and the difference. We have tremendous opportunities in every corner of the region, and the way we tackle them must be cognizant and sensitive to cultural differences. That is fascinating to me: working with stakeholders who approach things differently and being sensitive and responsive to that. It is highly motivating.
The drive and energy come from fulfilling the company’s mission across these countries, each with its own challenges, and from working with teams that are extremely diverse but uniformly professional, passionate, and committed to Gilead’s mission.
EF: Could you tell us a little more about the portfolio, how it is making an impact in your region, and how it is evolving?
VP: If we break it down by therapy areas and start with HIV, over the last 40 years, the initial challenge was how to stop people from dying early. After 1996, with the understanding that triple therapy or highly active antiretroviral therapy using three different agents could keep people alive indefinitely, we reached a major milestone. People would no longer die of HIV; they would die with HIV.
After that, our focus has been not only on keeping people alive but on making the disease as innocuous as possible in their day-to-day lives. HIV is a systemic disease and affects all organ systems, even though we mostly talk about its impact on the immune system. Early treatments added to the burden due to side effects, so over the years, we have pushed the boundaries of efficacy while also improving safety and side-effect profiles. The goal has been to ensure treatment does not add to the burden but actually removes it.
We also focused on reducing the burden of treatment. We were one of the companies that, in partnership with two others, brought the first single-tablet regimen to market, one tablet once a day, which was a major advance. Now we are asking how we can go further. Can we develop novel mechanisms of action that target the virus while supporting long-term treatment and preventing resistance? And at the same time, can we reduce treatment burden even more?
This means exploring whether we can go from one tablet once a day to much longer intervals. Can we treat once a week, once a month, every couple of months? Can we treat every six months, or even once a year? The immediate benefit for patients is clear: fewer tablets, fewer doctor visits, and treatment at longer intervals. Beyond that, it also affects efficacy and resistance. The less dependent we are on a patient remembering to take a tablet every single day, the fewer opportunities there are for viral rebound and the emergence of resistance.
Looking ahead, this is where Gilead is headed. We are thinking about how to continue improving treatment through new mechanisms of action and less frequent dosing. We are also focusing on populations still in need, patients who have been living with HIV for many years and may have fewer options today. Our goal is to provide them with regimens that keep them virologically suppressed into the future. If we achieve that broadly, then U = U, undetectable means untransmittable, and we continue to break the chain of HIV transmission. On top of treatment, we have prevention strategies using medicines to protect people at the highest risk from contracting HIV. By doing this, we can further break the chain of transmission.
Partnership is critical. Innovation is useless if it does not reach patients. In the Middle East, Russia, and Turkey, we partner with healthcare systems and health authorities to ensure medicines reach the market in a sustainable way for both the authorities and Gilead. We also work to identify people who are infected but unaware of their status, helping them get linked to care and appropriate treatment. This supports the UNAIDS targets: 95% of those infected know their status, 95% of those are linked to care, and 95% of those are undetectable.
By working upstream and downstream, preventing, identifying, and treating, we hope to break the momentum of HIV, bring the epidemic under control, and move toward a future where HIV ends for everyone, everywhere. Some ask if that would put us out of business. That is why we continue to innovate in other areas, ensuring sustainability into the future. But achieving this vision, in partnership with health authorities, healthcare professionals, and patient associations, would be truly amazing. We are fully committed to making it a reality.
In viral hepatitis, we have already brought cures for hepatitis C. With what is available today, as long as patients receive treatment, almost everyone can be cured. Only a very small number of people do not respond, but from a therapeutic perspective, the tools to cure nearly all patients exist.
The remaining challenge is hepatitis B. There has been a vaccination program for more than 40 years, but despite this, we still do not have a cure. We can make the virus undetectable, and we are investigating ways to stimulate the immune system to better fight hepatitis B. Our ambition is to eventually develop a cure for Hep B as we did for Hep C. It is a more difficult virus, but we continue to work on it. We are also investing in finding a cure for HIV. Recently, we brought a hepatitis delta medicine to market, and we are now looking at how to improve it further. We continue working to make both the disease and the treatment less burdensome for patients.
In oncology, for hematological cancers, we see a very promising future through our Kite cell therapy division. We are not satisfied with what we have today. We are bringing new cell therapies to market and exploring ways to make treatment easier, because right now we must take cells from the patient, modify them, and create the therapy from that. Moving forward, we are exploring whether we can develop treatments that do not rely solely on the patient’s own cells. We are also looking at new diseases that cell therapy could address.
In breast cancer, we have introduced an antibody drug conjugate that is important for treating triple-negative breast cancer and hormone-sensitive cancers. We are expanding research to see if it can be used for other tumour types, and we are also working on additional medicines that could help address tumours with high unmet need.
In inflammation, there is still plenty of work to do. We are working with health authorities in the Gulf to approve a medicine for primary biliary cholangitis, a rare disease with a high burden and high unmet need. We believe we can make a meaningful difference here as well, and there is more to come.
EF: Given the way the world is changing, the way we interact is changing. What kind of people are you looking for?
VP: I am as thoughtful as anyone about what these evolving changes represent, what they mean, and how they will impact us in the future. We have not settled so that the change will be constant.
We will be looking for people who are adaptable to change and can work effectively in an uncertain environment. People who can maintain focus when there are a million distractions on their attention.
And we will need this ability to relate to each other. Our ability to relate to each other sincerely, to identify the common goals we share with different stakeholders, and to work toward achieving them. This will be fundamental for the people who come to work for us in the future, as well as for the people we have today and are looking to develop. If we can find those people and bring them on, we will be in a better place.
