Speaker Profile
Ph.D., Vice President, Research & Development, Castle Biosciences
Biography
Dr. Rebecca Critchley-Thorne joined Castle Biosciences in December 2021 as Vice President, RD, Spatialomics and GI, as part of the acquisition of Cernostics Inc., where she was Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer. She led the development of the TissueCypher computational pathology platform as well as the TissueCypher Barretts Esophagus test and its supporting clinical studies. She currently oversees RD for Castles commercially available tests and pipeline activities. She completed training as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where she focused on highly multiplexed analysis of biomarkers to understand mechanisms of immune dysfunction in various cancer types. She completed doctoral work in cancer immunotherapy at Imperial College and Cancer Research UK in London, UK, and earned a B.S. (Hons) degree in Pharmacology from the University of Sheffield, UK. Dr. Critchley-Thorne is the author of many medical and scientific publications, a principal investigator on NIH-funded research studies, and an inventor on several of Castle's patents.
Session Abstract – PMWC 2026 Silicon Valley
Track Chair:
Christina Curtis, Stanford
PMWC Award Ceremony
• W.E. Moerner, Stanford – Nobel Laureate
• Priscilla Chan, Co-founder & Co-CEO, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
• Serge Saxonov, 10x Genomics
Honorees Fireside
• Chair: Christina Curtis, Stanford
• W.E. Moerner, Stanford — Nobel Laureate
• Priscilla Chan, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
• Serge Saxonov, 10x Genomics
Unraveling Tissue Architecture with Single-Cell & Spatial Multi-Omics
• Joakim Lundeberg, SciLifeLab
• Garry P. Nolan, Stanford
• Tae Hyun Hwang, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
• Michael Angelo, Stanford
Scaling Spatial Genomics for Routine Clinical Discovery
• Jeremy Schurman, Singular Genomics
Nanomechanical Biomarkers: Tissue-Stiffness Meets Spatial Multi-Omics in Oncology
• Chair: Marija Plodinec, ARTIDIS
Single-Cell Genotype and Targeted Gene Expression Assay
• Zivjena Vucetic, Mission Bio
Tumor Evolution & Clonal Dynamics: From Models to Monitoring
• Chair: Christina Curtis, Stanford
Personal Omics at Scale – What Longitudinal Profiles Add to Early Detection
• Michael Snyder, Stanford
Multi-Omics-Driven Early Detection: Beyond Liquid Biopsy
• Ash Alizadeh, Stanford
• Alex Aravanis, Moonwalk Biosciences
• Sara Ahadi, OmicsEra
AI in Molecular Diagnostics: Integrating Multi-Omics & Clinical Data
• Chair: Marina Sirota, UCSF
• Olivier Gevaert, Stanford
• Rebecca Critchley-Thorne, Castle Biosciences
• Lihua Lei, Stanford
The Pre-Analytics Playbook for Single-Cell & Spatial Oncology
• Aruna Ayer, BD
