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Biography
I began my undergraduate career at the University of Miami (FL). While at Miami, I worked in the lab of Dr. Norito Takenaka in the field of asymmetric catalysis, looking at new uses for the Diels-Alder reaction. After graduating in 2011, I joined the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey Johnston at Vanderbilt University for graduate school. The bulk of my PhD work focused on developing new methods for the synthesis of complex amino acids using chiral proton catalysis. These methods were then applied to the synthesis of small molecule therapeutics, including a human proteasome inhibitor. After earning my PhD in 2016, I moved to Milwaukee for medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), earning my MD in May 2021. During medical school, I worked on epigenetic readers/writers/erasers and chemokines, with Dr. Brian Smith.
After medical school, I joined the lab of Dr. Jonathan Marchant (at MCW) as an NIH- and AHA-funded postdoctoral fellow. In the Marchant Lab, I worked on antiparasitic targets in the schistosome and in Fasciola. Ultimately, we discovered a first-in-class broad spectrum flukicide to treat parasitic fluke infections. I also contributed to molecular modeling efforts and the discovery of the biological targets of different antiparasitic drugs.
In June of 2024, the Sprague Lab opened at MUSC in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Here, we are a drug discovery lab, focused on uncovering new targets for anti-infectives, illuminating new pathways in cancer, and studying neuropharmacology.