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Researchers have developed a virtual molecular library of thousands of "command phrases" for cells, based on combinations of "words" that have guided immune cell engineering to relentlessly seek out and kill cancer cells. This advance allows scientists to predict which natural or synthesized elements to include in a cell to give it the precise behaviors needed to effectively respond to complex diseases. Much of therapeutic cell engineering involves selecting or creating receptors that, when added to the cell, will enable it to perform a new function. Putting the right receptor into a type of immune cell called a T cell can reprogram it to recognize and kill cancer cells. So the researchers created a library of nearly 2,400 randomly combined command phrases and tested hundreds of them in T cells to see how effective they were in fighting leukemia. They applied new machine learning methods to the data to generate entirely new receptor phrases that they predicted would be more effective. The researchers believe this approach will lead to cell-based therapies for autoimmunity, regenerative medicine and other applications.