The Italian government has pledged to create a formal system for the competitive distribution of funds for biomedical research, which will conform to international standards of peer review and transparency.

The statement of intent has partially mollified biologists, some of whom last year protested the murky allocation of research funds by the ISS, Italy's health-research institute in Rome. Stem-cell researchers were particularly angry about how funds earmarked for their field were distributed (see Nature 450, 320; 2007).

The health ministry, which made the announcement on 1 October, has not yet indicated when the system would come into effect.