In 2017, Deanne Taylor attended a talk where the Human Cell Atlas was unveiled, but the plan was to study only adults. The revelation sparked alarm for Taylor, who had felt the lack of pediatric focus at CHOP since becoming its bioinformatics director three years earlier.

She mobilized a cross‑hospital coalition of pediatric researchers, co‑authored a 2019 white paper, and pushed for a dedicated pediatric section in the Human Cell Atlas. In 2021, the NIH awarded a $38.5 million grant to the Developmental Genotype‑Tissue Expression (dGTEx) project, creating the first comprehensive database of healthy pediatric tissue.

Taylor curates each tissue donation’s metadata while separate teams analyze the samples. The baseline maps roughly 20,000 genes across major organ systems, providing a molecular reference for pediatric development, disease, and drug efficacy.

Her career, described as a random walk, began with childhood reading of medical texts and a 2001 biophysics PhD, followed by posts at Pfizer and embryo screening work. Taylor’s focus on why the same disease gene affects people differently now drives her to ensure pediatric perspectives are included in the Human Cell Atlas, a step she believes will change pediatric medicine.