Cerebral ischemic injury may lead to a series of serious brain diseases, death or different degrees of disability. Hypoxia‑inducible factor‑1α (HIF‑1α) is an oxygen‑sensitive transcription factor, which mediates the adaptive metabolic response to hypoxia and serves a key role in cerebral ischemia. HIF‑1α is the main molecule that responds to hypoxia. HIF‑1α serves an important role in the development of cerebral ischemia by participating in numerous processes, including metabolism, proliferation and angiogenesis. The present review focuses on the endogenous protective mechanism of cerebral ischemia and elaborates on the role of HIF‑1α in cerebral ischemia. In addition, it focuses on cerebral ischemia interventions that act on the HIF‑1α target, including biological factors, non‑coding RNA, hypoxic‑ischemic preconditioning and drugs, and expands upon the measures to strengthen the endogenous compensatory response to support HIF‑1α as a therapeutic target, thus providing novel suggestions for the treatment of cerebral ischemia.
Keywords: angiogenesis; endogenous protection; hypoxia‑inducible factor‑1α cerebral ischemia; neuroprotection; pretreatment.