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 Honoree
• W.E. Moerner, Stanford – Nobel Laureate
• Priscilla Chan, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
• Serge Saxonov, 10x Genomics
Fireside Chat
• Moderator: Christina Curtis, Stanford
• W.E. Moerner, Stanford
• Priscilla Chan, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Fireside Chat with 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
Tumor Evolution & Clonal Dynamics: From Models to Monitoring
• Chair: Christina Curtis, Stanford
Multi-Omics-Driven Early Detection: Beyond Liquid Biopsy
• Ash Alizadeh, Stanford
• Alex Aravanis, Moonwalk Biosciences
Personal Omics at Scale: What Longitudinal Profiles Add to Early Detection
• Michael Snyder, Stanford
AI in Molecular Diagnostics: Integrating Multi-Omics & Clinical Data
• Chair: Marina Sirota, UCSF
• Olivier Gevaert, Stanford
• Rebecca Critchley-Thorne, Castle Biosciences
Nanomechanical Signatures for Cancer Diagnostics: Insights from Tumor Biophysics
• Chair: Marija Plodinec, Artidis
