New therapeutic strategies are explored for patients suffering from cerebral infarct. Gene therapy is one of the hopeful strategies and we have studied ex vivo gene therapy for stroke using animal models of cerebral infarct over a decade. In this review, we describe encapsulated cell transplantation using neurotrophic factor-producing cells and neurotrophic factor-producing neural stem/progenitor cells for cerebral infarct model of animals. Furthermore, the perspectives of gene therapy for cerebral infarct are reviewed.