Sometime soon, it may seem like an archaic practice to replace parts of the face with synthetic or grafted tissue—scientists are figuring out how to coax the body into regrowing its own facial tissues, according to a review article published Thursday in the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery. Scientists working in the field of regenerative medicine are engineering substances that can help the body grow to repair its own damage. For the face in particular, that means making these procedures less reliant on tissues grafted from elsewhere on a patient’s body, Matthew Q. Miller, a head and neck surgeon with the University of Virginia Health System and the author of the current study, told Vocativ via email. Though scientists’ interest in regenerative medicine has grown steadily since the early 2000s, interest in facial surgeries in particular isn’t reflected in the literature until 2010. Miller believes there are two reasons for this. Generally, facial surgeries have good outcomes—they heal quickly and have a low rate of infection, so there’s no need for dramatic improvement. Read more at Vocativ.