Given his experience in the chemical industry, Dr. Patel transitioned to the pharmaceutical
industry with an interest in biocatalysis and biotechnology and their implications in drug
discovery and development. During his tenure at Bristol Myers Squibb (1987-2008), Dr. Patel
successfully started groups in fermentation, biocatalysis and biorecovery processes bringing
together multiple scientific disciplines in various project teams. These teams have created novel
process technologies, scaled-up, and commercialized processes to provide key chiral
intermediates during various stages of development of drugs such as toxicology studies, phase
I, phase II and Phase III clinical trials. He has also developed processes for the preparation of
key metabolites of various drugs under development using microbial P-450 systems. In addition,
he has worked on the development and scale-up and commercialization of fermentation and
biorecovery processes for production and commercialization natural products such as
epothilones, pravastatin, and amphotericin B He developed and scaled-up processes for
immobilization of various enzymes including lipases and demonstrated reusability of
immobilized biocatalysts on commercial scale in various enzymatic resolution processes and
asymmetric synthesis. He has successfully developed enzymatic processes for production of
chiral alcohols, unnatural amino acids, amines, epoxides, diols, lactones, acids, esters. He
received presidential awards from Bristol-Myers Squibb for development, scale-up and
commercialization of processes for synthesis key intermediates and drugs such as Pravastatin