OBJECTIVE To investigate the adhesive interactions of cells with materials and the effects of material properties on cell adhesion in tissue engineering. METHODS By looking up the recent literatures dealt with adhesive interactions of cells with materials and reviewing previous work on the adhesion of tissue-derived cells to materials. RESULTS The adhesion characteristics of cells to materials not only depend on the nature of materials, including bulk and surface properties, surface modification, surface morphology, net charge, porosity and degradation rate, but also on the expression of cell surface molecules and their interaction with the material. CONCLUSION The quantitative measure and biophysical mechanisms of cell adhesion to materials might be very important in tissue engineering.