Apart from the role of the Bcl-2 family in brain development (Fricker et al., 2018), ample evidence link the Bcl-2 family members to a variety of central nervous system pathologies including stroke and excitotoxic injury (Engel et al., 2011; D’Orsi et al., 2012; Niu et al., 2017) and demonstrate strong neuroprotective function of Bcl-XL (González-García et al., 1995). Here, BCL2 is linked to Stroke.