Pretty obvious he was still a C-level officer of XeChem when this work was going on...
in addition, here is another patent application he filed in May 2010 as a co-applicant with the company(AesRx)that funded the filing of XeChem's Bk and that he sold 5-HMF to:
20100255132 Novel botanical formulation for treating sickle cell disease United States Patent Application 20100255132 Kind Code A1 Nathan; Swami ; et al. October 7, 2010