An important topic in cartilage tissue engineering is the development of biomimetic scaffolds which mimic the depth/dependent material properties of the native tissue. We describe an advanced trilayered nanocomposite hydrogel (ferrogel) with a gradient in compressive
modulus from the top to the bottom layers (p<0.05) of the construct. Further, the scaffold was able to respond to remote external stimulation,
exhibiting an elastic, depth/dependent strain gradient. When bovine chondrocytes were seeded into the ferrogels and cultured for up to 14 days, there was good cell viability and a biochemical gradient was measured with sulfated glycosaminoglycan increasing with depth from the surface. This novel construct provides tremendous scope for tailoring location/specific cartilage replacement tissue; by varying the density of magnetic nanoparticles, concentration of base hydrogel and number of cells, physiologically relevant depth/dependent gradients may be attained.