On strongly pi-regular rings of stable range one

An associative ring R is said to have stable range one if for any a, b ∈ R satisfying aR + bR = R, there exists y ∈ R such that a + by is right (equivalently, left) invertible. Call a ring R strongly π-regular if for every element a ∈ R there exist a number n (depending on a) and an element x ∈ R such that an = an+1x. It is an open question whether all strongly π-regular rings have stable range one. The purpose of this note is to prove the following Theorem: If R is a strongly π-regular ring with the property that all powers of every nilpotent von Neumann regular element are von Neumann regular in R, then R has stable range one.