Synthetic biology approaches to engineer T cells

•Synthetic biology uses modular molecular components to control cellular behavior.•T cells are emerging as a viable platform for cell therapy in cancer and autoimmunity.•Convergence of cell therapy and synthetic biology has demonstrated ways to rewire input sensing and activation of T cells.•Rewiring approaches generate insights into T cell decision making and lead to more precision controlled therapeutic cells.

There is rapidly growing interest in learning how to engineer immune cells, such as T lymphocytes, because of the potential of these engineered cells to be used for therapeutic applications such as the recognition and killing of cancer cells. At the same time, our knowhow and capability to logically engineer cellular behavior is growing rapidly with the development of synthetic biology. Here we describe how synthetic biology approaches are being used to rationally alter the behavior of T cells to optimize them for therapeutic functions. We also describe future developments that will be important in order to construct safe and precise T cell therapeutics.