CXCL12 and ischemia: In parallel, the rotarod test showed that the motor function greatly improved in all therapeutic groups at 5 weeks after ischemia compared to the PBS group (24.63 ± 7.54 s), with a better improvement in the CXCL12-EPC group (65.25 ± 16.82 s) compared to the LV-CXCL12 group (46.22 ± 4.99 s) and the GFP-EPC group (45.75 ± 9.60 s) (Fig. 2C).