VEGFA and ischemic stroke: PAX6 is an important factor to direct astroglial to neuronal lineages (Heins et al., 2002; Kronenberg et al., 2010).We have reported that ischemic stroke induces expression of PAX6 in reactive astrocytes in adult rat brain, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) enhances PAX6‐expressed astrocytes and the conversion of astrocyte‐to‐neuron (Shen et al., 2016).