Abstract: Stroke is a devastating disorder that significantly contributes to death, disability and health care costs. The current challenge is to prevent late cell death, with concomitant therapy to widen the therapeutic window. A potential diagnostic method for stroke is the use of RNA in the blood as a biomarker, which is an emerging field in medicine. Here the inventors explore the expression of genes after the onset of cerebral ischemia in the brain and blood. The study of macaque microarray expression data from brain and blood revealed that ischemic and nonischaemic samples can be distinguished based on their expression profiles, and the majority of highly differentially expressed genes are up-regulated in the ischemic scenario 6 hours after ischemia. A comparison of differentially expressed genes in the brain and the blood revealed a significant overlap of gene expression patterns.

Abstract: The invention provides an agonist or antagonist of the GPR54 receptor for its use for treating a gonadotropin related disorder, a ligand of the GPR54 receptor for its use for diagnosing a subject's gonadotropin abnormality; a method for screening a compound that affect the gonadotropic axis comprising the step of assaying the compound in the presence of a GPR54 receptor and novel proteins useful in the above.