RIP1 is a crucial mediator in many forms of necrotic cell death and its inhibition by Nec-1 (Degterev et al., 2005, 2008) is neuroprotective in rodent disease models including ischemic stroke (Cho et al., 2009; He et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2009). Here, RIPK1 is linked to ischemic stroke.