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Cerebral ischemia is the second most common cause of death and a major cause of disability worldwide. Available therapies are based only on anticoagulants or recombinant tissue plasminogen activator. Extracellular adenosine increases during ischemia and acts as a neuroprotective endogenous agent mainly by activating adenosine A1 receptors (A1Rs) which control calcium influx, glutamate release, membrane potential, and metabolism. Accordingly, in many experimental paradigms it has been already demonstrated that the stimulation of A1R with full agonists is able to reduce ischemia‐related structural and functional brain damage; unfortunately, cardiovascular side effects and desensitization of A1R induced by these compounds have strongly limited their exploitation in stroke therapy so far. Among the newly emerging compounds, A1R partial agonists could be almost free of side effects and equally effective. Therefore, we decided to evaluate the neuroprotective potential of two A1R partial agonists, namely 2′‐dCCPA and 3′‐dCCPA, in in vitro and ex vivo experimental models of cerebral ischemia. Within the experimental paradigm of oxygen‐glucose deprivation in vitro in human neuroblastoma (SH‐SY5Y) cells both A1R partial agonists increased cell viability. Considering the high level of expression of A1Rs in the hippocampus and the susceptibility of CA1 region to hypoxia, we performed electrophysiological experiments in this subfield. The application of 7 min of oxygen‐glucose deprivation constantly produces an irreversible synaptic failure in all the C57Bl/6 mice hippocampal slices evaluated; both tested compounds allowed a significant recovery of synaptic transmission. These findings demonstrate that A1R and its partial agonists are still of interest for cerebral ischemia therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]