Dr Maisa Seppala

Dr Maisa Seppala (DDS, MSc, PhD, MOrth RCSEd, FDSOrth RCSEng, FHEA) is a senior clinical lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Orthodontics at King’s College London (KCL) based at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

She carried out her PhD funded by EU Early Stage Marie Curie Fellowship at KCL under supervision of Professor Martyn Cobourne and Professor Paul Sharpe that focused on regulation of Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signaling by transmembrane protein Gas1 during craniofacial midline and dental development. Her research introduced Gas1 as a potential causative gene for congenital facial midline anomaly, holoprosencephaly, that was later found to be true in a cohort of Brazilian patients.

She has then further investigated the role of genetic modifiers in this condition and her current research focuses on how Gas1 regulates the dental formula by interacting with Shh and other possible novel signaling pathways essential for normal tooth development. Her work has been funded by EOS research grant on “Understanding the cellular basis of supernumerary tooth formation using a mouse model” and Academy of Medical Sciences on “Odontomes as prognostic markers for disrupted WNT signalling”.

Dr Seppala graduated as a dentist in 2002 at Oulu Dental Institute, Finland. She completed her Orthodontic MSc at KCL as an NIHR funded Walport Academic Clinical Fellow and her clinical specialist and post-CCST training by rotating between Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College, St George’s and William Harvey Hospitals.