Precision medicine in gastrointestinal cancer

See how 3D in vitro models are used in real-life hospital environment to choose most potential drug per patient.

Presenter: Dr. Toni Seppälä, Tampere University | UPM Biomedicals 8th Annual Conference, 2022

Dr. Toni T. Seppälä graduated from medical school as licentiate of medicine in the University of Eastern Finland in 2010 and defended his PhD thesis on Alzheimer’s disease in 2012. During surgery residency with professor Jukka-Pekka Mecklin’s mentorship he became interested in cancer research.

In 2019–2021 Dr. Seppälä underwent a research fellowship at the department of Surgical Oncology in the Johns Hopkins University and Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore, MD, USA, under supervision of pancreatic surgeons Dr. Richard Burkhart and Dr. Christopher Wolfgang.

In 2022, he was appointed as a tenure track professor of cancer research in University of Tampere and leads laboratories and research groups in Tampere and Helsinki Universities.

He serves on the board of Directors of the European Hereditary Tumour Group, the scientific committee of the Prospective Lynch Syndrome Database, and as a Secretary of the Finnish Society of Surgery.

Dr. Seppälä has published over 100 articles, opinions, podcasts and interviews with >3000 citations, and raised over 2.2M euros of competed research funding.

The majority of Dr. Seppälä’s research have been from the field of hereditary cancer, colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer, and he is appreciated as an expert especially in Lynch Syndrome. His current interests in cancer research are in personalized medicine utilizing precision technologies in solid tumors, such as genomics, patient-derived organoids and cell-free DNA.

He has worked as a colorectal surgeon since board certification in 2018, and was appointed as associate professor at Uni. Helsinki in 2019.