Nature Biotechnology published work outlining technologies needed to map and engineer the human cell–cell interactome, with an emphasis on linking cellular communication to functional biology. The discussion frames an atlas of cell interactions as a step toward actionable therapeutic avenues, including interventions that disrupt pathological signaling. Separately, a related perspective highlights the broader effort to decode cell communication networks using advances in single-cell transcriptomics and spatial profiling. Together, the articles underline that identifying which cells talk, through what modalities, and where in tissue is still a central bottleneck. For biotech teams, these efforts aim at improved mechanistic models for target selection and therapeutic mechanism-of-action hypotheses, especially in complex microenvironments where signaling drives disease progression. The publications also reinforce the need for scalable, interoperable data and analytics workflows that translate cell interaction signals into engineering and drug development programs.