When the brain loses tissue to stroke, no medicine yet known can resurrect what has died — only the slow, uncertain work of the body's own repair systems remains. Researchers at Duke University have taken a step toward guiding that work, developing an injectable scaffold that appears to transform the silent cavity left by stroke into a site of active regeneration. By anchoring therapeutic signals from brain cells onto a porous hydrogel structure, the team coaxed immune cells, blood vessels, and nerve fibers to rebuild damaged tissue in mice — with functional recovery holding steady eight weeks