Every day thousands of surgical procedures are performed to replace or repair tissue that has been damaged through disease or trauma. The developing field of tissue engineering (TE) aims to regenerate damaged tissues by combining cells from the body with highly porous scaffold biomaterials, which act as templates for tissue regeneration, to guide the growth of new tissue. This article describes the functional requirements, and types, of materials used in developing state of the art of scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. Furthermore, it describes the challenges and where future research and direction is required in this rapidly advancing field.