Posted on behalf of Erika Check Hayden

Stem cell researchers may have to wait no longer: President Barack Obama appears ready to lift the ban on U.S. federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001.

The ban was put in place by President George W. Bush, who was responding to concerns among abortion opponents that research on human embryonic stem cells is morally problematic because it involves destruction of embryos. Obama will reportedly sign an executive order overturning the ban on Monday, 9 March. The Washington Post also reported that Obama will likely “simply lift the restriction without caveats and let the [U.S. National Institutes of Health] work out the details.” The NIH is currently formulating ethical guidelines and policies that scientists for scientists who want to apply for federal grants to work with human embryonic stem cells.

Obama’s action comes after research advocates had expressed concern over what they considered Obama’s delay in meeting his campaign promise to overturn the ban. “Obviously, we have concerns and would like to see this done,” Tony Mazzaschi, interim chief scientific officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington DC told Nature last month.

There has also been extensive discussion about whether the ban should simply be overturned by executive order, or whether the job should be done through legislation that would prevent more flip-flops on stem cell policy under future presidents. Now it appears the ban will be overturned both through Obama’s expected executive order and through legislation, as lawmakers have already introduced bills to undo the ban. Similar bills have previously been passed by Congress, but were vetoed twice by Bush; they would likely be signed into law by Obama if Congress passed them again.

Now, scientists are excited at the chance to undo what they see as political interference that has slowed a promising area of research. Human embryonic stem cells can turn into any cell type in the body, making them potentially powerful tools for investigating disease, and possibly treating it. “I feel vindicated after eight years of struggle, and I know it’s going to energize my research team,” George Daley of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Children’s Hospital of Boston told the Associated Press.

Daley and other researchers have been excited by the development of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which have many of the properties of stem cells yet seem less ethically problematic because they are made from adult cells, such as skin cells. Yet they have also cautioned that the cells are not exactly the same as embryonic (ES) stem cells, so there is still a need to continue both lines of research.

“At this point we clearly still need ES cells,” Konrad Hochedlinger of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, told Nature last fall. “It is unclear to what extent ES cells and iPS cells are really equivalent to each other, and showing this will require much more work.”

More stories: New York Times, BBC, and many others. And stay tuned to nature.com/news for more in-depth coverage from Nature.