Ravi Patel, MD is a board certified medical oncologist who has been in active practice for more than twenty years. He founded Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center (CBCC) and grew it from a 1000 square foot office with one employee into a truly comprehensive, community focused diagnostic, treatment, educational and research based cancer center. Dr. Patel is actively involved with the leading pharmaceutical manufactures and academic research programs to assure that cancer patients in Kern County have access to the most cutting edge medicines and treatments available anywhere in the world. His goal is for every patient treated at CBCC to have access to at least one standard cancer therapy and one more advanced treatment regimen, which CBCC makes available through its rigorously managed program of clinical research trials. To this end, Dr. Patel has chosen to affiliate CBCC with the UCLA School of Medicine. Working through the UCLA research consortium, UCLA employees manage clinical trials along side the Center's own research staff. Several of the treatments tested at the CBCC have proven to be highly successful and have gone on to receive approval from the Federal Government's Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These breakthrough treatments have changed the way that many forms of cancer are now being managed around the world. As a result of his clinical research experience, Dr. Patel has authored several scientific papers in such respected journals as the Journal of Clinical Oncology and Clinical Lymphoma. He is sought after as a lecturer and consultant on clinical oncology issues and patient care. In this capacity, he serves as an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He is actively involved with the Residency Program in Internal Medicine at the Kern County Medical Center.