MST1 and brain ischemia: Zhao et al. (2016) also confirmed that Hippo/MST1 signaling pathway can mediate microglial activation after cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury through IκBα phosphorylation. The Hippo/MST1 signaling pathway is involved in apoptosis, oxidative stress and inflammation. The loss of the MST1 gene in microglia leads to reduction of microglial activation and improvement of neuronal injury after cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury (Zhao et al., 2016). Similar results have also been confirmed in TBI (Li et al., 2018) and spinal cord injury models in rats (Wang et al., 2017).