The articular cartilage is unique in that it contains only a single type of cell and shows poor ability for spontaneous healing. Currently, approaches for treating cartilage defects include surgical and nonsurgical approaches, as well as cartilage tissue engineering. For standard cartilage tissue engineering, three elements are required, i.e., a scaffold, growth factors, and seed cells. With advancements in in stem cell research, the main sources of cells for cartilage tissue engineering are embryonic and mesenchymal stem cells, which have been shown to be promising alternatives in recent years.