The ability to wholly engineer faces from stem cells looks highly likely within the next 20 years, experts claimed this week.

Francis Hughes, professor of periodontology at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, said that it was already possible to engineer specific tissues.

But the face is a complex entity, he said, and putting together all the different tissues required through engineering of stem cells was still a “major challenge.”

“Cells all talk to each other,” Professor Hughes said, “and there’s a lot more we need to know [about this].”

Professor Hughes was …