Ischemic stroke is a leading cause of death and long-lasting disability. However, therapeutic options for acute ischemic stroke remain very limited.1) Ischemic stroke triggers a cascade of pathophysiological events including excitotoxicity, ionic imbalance, oxidative stress, and apoptosis-like cell death ending in destructive neurodegeneration.2-4) The cumulative evidence suggests involvement of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the pathogenesis of ischemic injury.5) Several components of ROS including superoxides ( · O 2 Ϫ ), hydroxyl radicals ( · OH), and hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) are generated by post-ischemia/reperfusion injury. They are known to induce DNA damage, lipid peroxidation, disruption of blood brain-barrier (BBB), and microglial activation in the ischemic tissue. The rat middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model mimics the pathophysiological consequences induced by ischemic stroke in humans and thus has been frequently employed.Cyanine photosensitizing dyes have been shown to have various biological activities, such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, macrophage activation, and oxidative phosphorylation uncoupling activities.6-9) Some of those dyes have been used as immunomodulators to treat allergy and rheumatoid arthritis, and to promote wound-healing. [10][11][12][13] It was reported that platonin, a kind of cyanine dye, suppressed acute endotoxemia in rats by inhibiting inflammatory cytokine release from lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated lymphocytes.14,15) Recent studies suggested that neutrophil infiltration and release of inflammatory cytokines (i.e., interleukin (IL)-1b, IL-6, IL-17, IL-23, and tumor necrosis factor-a) participate in a secondary mechanism of brain injury following ischemia and reperfusion. [16][17][18] Because there is substantial evidence showing that immune responses play crucial roles in mediating neuronal damage in the animal model of stroke, 16) it is reasonable to expect that cyanine dyes with anti-inflammatory properties could protect against neuroinflammatory events. To our knowledge, little is not known whether these dyes are pharmacologically active against ischemia-induced brain injury or neurodegenerative disorders. To explore this potential of cyanine dyes, it would be of interest to examine their effects in the MCAO model, an animal model of ischemic stroke. Prior to the in vivo evaluation, we screened more than 250 cyanine dyes for their neurotrophin-like activity (such as potentiation of neurite outgrowth in neural cells) and found that NK-4 (Fig. 1A), NK-150 (Fig. 1B), and some other related compounds showed remarkable neurite outgrowth-promoting activity in PC12 neural cells. NK-4 and NK-150 are thought to be safe compounds since they showed no acute toxicity when orally-administrated to mice at a dose of 2000 mg/kg (our unpublished observation). In the present report, we further examined NK-4 and NK-150 for their ability to promote nerve growth factor (NGF)-primed neurite outgrowth and for free radical scavenging activity in vitro. We also examined the...