Stroke kills more than 500,000 people each year in the European Union alone and is also the leading cause of permanent disability. Due to the demographic age shift, these numbers will increase continuously. The clinical management of the acute stroke is nowadays well stablished with both thrombolysis and mechanical thrombectomy. However, the subacute ischemic stroke care has received little attention due to lack of efficient therapies. Thus, there is an urgent medical need for the establishment of novel diagnostic and treatment strategies focused in the subacute ischemic stroke. Based on the observation that matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) exert control on the secondary ischemic damage after preclinical stroke, we propose these MMPs as promising targets for subacute stroke therapy.