Recently, we showed for the first time that two post‐ischemic injections of BML‐111 (1 mg/kg; i.v.)provides protection to the BBB and reduces stroke volume and neuroinflammatory factors including neutrophil infiltration, intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)‐1 expression, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)‐9 and MMP‐3 levels, and CD68 expression at 2 days post‐stroke in a rat model of transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO) (Hawkins et al., 2014). Here, MMP9 is linked to stroke disorder.