Cathryn Cadwell

Cathryn Cadwell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. She holds a dual MD/PhD from Baylor College of Medicine and completed residency and fellowship in Anatomic Pathology and Neuropathology at UCSF. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying human cerebral cortex development and disease, utilizing iPSC-derived organoids and primary tissue cultures.

• B.S. in Neuroscience and Biochemistry, Baylor University (2007)
• Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine (2015)
• M.D., Baylor College of Medicine (2016)
• Residency in Anatomic Pathology, UCSF (2019)
• Fellowship in Neuropathology, UCSF (2021)

Dr. Cadwell’s lab specializes in multimodal single-cell analysis techniques like Patch-seq, combining electrophysiology, transcriptomics, and morphology to study cortical cell diversity. Current projects include investigating retinoic acid’s role in prefrontal cortex patterning, quantifying area-specific human brain cell types, identifying disease-related circuit alterations, and developing tools for single-cell genomics. Her work intersects developmental neuroscience, cancer biology, and neuroimaging.

Key trends in her publications include cortical development (2015–2022), single-cell methodologies (2016–2024), and glioma-neuronal interactions (2020–2025). She has contributed to organoid modeling of neuropsychiatric disorders and studies on viral vector safety in prenatal gene delivery.

Dr. Cadwell has received NIH/NINDS grants as Principal Investigator, including K08NS126573 (2022–2027) for retinoic acid signaling research and F30MH095440 (2013–2015) for visual cortex lineage studies. She also participated in the R25NS070680 program.