"Blade Runner is the best movie ever made," said Dr Stephen Minger, stem cell biologist at King's College London.
Professor Chris Mason, a stem cell biologist at University College London, said the big challenge for Prof Ali's work would be whether it worked in patients.
The film is loosely based on Philip K Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? "Blade Runner is the best movie ever made," says Stephen Minger, stem cell biologist at King's College London.
Stephen Minger, a stem cell biologist at King's College London, says: "I was born in 1955, it was the early days of space travel and the Apollo and mercury missions.
"I was very impressed," says stem cell biologist Nicolas Pineault of Canadian Blood Services in Ottawa.
Stem cell biologist William Lowry of the University of California, Los Angeles, agrees.
The Kyoto group, led by stem cell biologist Mitinori Saitou, found a process that works.
The new facility's director, UCSF stem cell biologist Arnold Kriegstein, calls it "spectacular".
"It's an intriguing new approach," says stem cell biologist and clinician David Scadden of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
"Just billing yourself as a stem cell biologist doesn't mean that someone is really in this field," he says.
