A team of plastic surgeons and material scientists has made an important advance in treating the common clinical problem of soft tissue loss. They have invented a synthetic soft tissue substitute that is well tolerated and encourages the growth of soft tissue and blood vessels. This new material retains its shape without being too dense, overcoming challenges with current tissue fillers that tend to be either too soft or not porous enough to let cells move in and start regrowing tissue. A report on this work appears today in Science Translational Medicine.