PRNP and ischemia: The idea of compensatory upregulation of PrPC expression protecting against cell death in ischemia is supported by the findings that adenovirus-mediated overexpression of PrPC reduced ischemia-induced infarct volume in rats (Shyu et al., 2005) and PrPC-overexpressing mice showed smaller infarct volumes in response to ischemia than wild-type controls (Weise et al., 2008).