Infectious diseases and cancer evade immune surveillance using similar mechanisms. Targeting immune mechanisms using common strategies thus represents a promising avenue to improve prevention and treatment. Synthetic immunology can provide such strategies by applying engineering principles from synthetic biology to immunology. Synthetic biologists engineer cells by top-down genetic manipulation or bottom-up assembly from nanoscale building blocks. Recent successes in treating advanced tumours and diseases using genetically engineered immune cells highlight the power of the top-down synthetic immunology approach. However, genetic immune engineering is mostly limited to ex vivo applications and is subject to complex counter-regulation inherent to immune functions. Bottom-up synthetic biology can harness the rich nanotechnology toolbox to engineer molecular and cellular systems from scratch and equip them with desired functions. These are beginning to be tailored to perform targeted immune functions and should hence allow intervention strategies by rational design. In this Perspective we conceptualize bottom-up synthetic immunology as a new frontier field that uses nanotechnology for crucial innovations in therapy and the prevention of infectious diseases and cancer.

传染病和癌症使用类似的机制逃避免疫监视。因此，使用常见策略靶向免疫机制代表了改善预防和治疗的有前途的途径。合成免疫学可以通过将合成生物学的工程原理应用于免疫学来提供此类策略。合成生物学家通过自上而下的遗传操作或纳米级构建块的自下而上的组装来设计细胞。最近使用基因工程免疫细胞治疗晚期肿瘤和疾病的成功凸显了自上而下合成免疫学方法的力量。然而，基因免疫工程主要限于离体应用，并受到免疫功能固有的复杂反调节的影响。自下而上的合成生物学可以利用丰富的纳米技术工具箱从头开始设计分子和细胞系统，并为它们配备所需的功能。这些开始被定制以执行有针对性的免疫功能，因此应该允许通过合理的设计来制定干预策略。在这个观点中，我们将自下而上的合成免疫学概念化为一个新的前沿领域，它使用纳米技术在治疗和预防传染病和癌症方面进行关键创新。