VEGFA and ischemic stroke: Human umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (cbMNCs) transplantation had beneficial effects on improving the neurologic deficits, memory function and learning ability in ischemic stroke rats, which is associated with the activation of NF-κB, inhibition of NLRP3 inflammasome, increased level of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and Angiopoietin-1, and reduction of cleaved caspase-1 and mature IL-1β (Liu et al., 2018).