Injuries to articular cartilage are one of the most challenging issues of musculoskeletal medicine due to the poor intrinsic ability of this tissue for repair. Despite progress in orthopaedic surgery, cell-based surgical therapies such as autologous chondrocyte transplantation (ACT) have been in clinical use for cartilage repair for over a decade but this approach has shown mixed results. Moreover, the lack of efficient modalities of treatment for large chondral defects has prompted research on tissue engineering combining chondrogenic cells, scaffold materials and environmental factors.This paper focuses on the main parameters in tissue engineering and on the potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) as an alternative to cells derived from patient tissues in autologous transplantation and tissue engineering. Here we discuss the prospects of using autologous chondrocytes or MSCs in regenerative medicine and summarize the advantages and disadvantages of these cells in articular cartilage engineering.