Tissue engineering is a term popularised in the 1990s and familiar to orthopaedic surgeons, developed on a paradigm of interplay between cells, materials, and molecules. The paradigm is a useful way to consider regenerative medicine, as it is thought that many future therapeutics will be developed from combinations of the three areas e.g. a scaffold impregnated with specific molecules can be seeded with cells. The term orthobiologics can be considered in this context, with a definition based around ‘ortho’, meaning an application in musculoskeletal tissue, and ‘biologic’ which is typically used to mean a naturally occurring substance with the ability to heal. However, the term should not be confused with a ‘biologic medicine’ or disease modification therapy.