VEGFA and ischemic stroke: Previous studies showed that NBP treatment upregulates the VEGF and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) expressions in ischemic stroke patients and improve neurobehavioral recovery in rat ischemic stroke model (Liao et al., 2009; Tang et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2019); growth factor binds to its receptor to activate MAPK by B-Raf (Kao et al., 2001).