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Background  An electrically conductive hydrogel has emerged to regulate cellular secretion activities with electrical stimulation. However, the electrical conductivity of typical hydrogel systems decreases with increasing elastic modulus of the hydrogels because of decreased transport of ions through a polymeric cross-linked mesh.    Method  This study hypothesized that the inverse dependency between electrical conductivity and elastic modulus would be made through the cross-linking of conductive monomer-units conjugated to a hydrophilic polymeric backbone. This hypothesis was examined through the cross-linking of pyrrole groups that were conjugated to an alginate backbone, termed alginate-g-pyrrole.    Results  Hydrogels with increased degrees of pyrrole substitution exhibited a simultaneous increase in the gels mechanical rigidity and electrical conductivity. The resulting hydrogel could control the adhesion and vascular endothelial growth factor secretion of cells via applied electrical stimulation.    Conclusions  This material design principle will be broadly useful to fabricating materials used for various actuation, cell culture, and biomedical applications.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (10.1186/s40824-017-0110-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Proangiogenic alginate-g-pyrrole hydrogel with decoupled control of mechanical rigidity and electrically conductivity