During graduation season, it is not uncommon for senior scientists to dispense wisdom from stages, lecterns, bus stops or bar stools. Nearly 50 years ago, in a memorable line from the 1967 movie, The Graduate , a single word of career advice is bestowed upon the film's protagonist: plastics . For the biomedical graduate in 2015, another “p” word might be more appropriate: partnerships . Partnerships between academia, pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, foundations, patients, and their families are inexorably changing the nature of biomedical research and will inevitably impact on how science is funded, organized, and conducted. They will also, one hopes, unlock the enormous potential of translational science for finding new treatments, cures, preventions, and diagnostics against a wide range of complex and/or rare diseases. > Partnerships between academia, pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, foundations, patients and their families are inexorably changing the nature of biomedical research… Since the Enlightenment, science has been a global enterprise, and universities, academies, and research institutions have always collaborated both nationally and globally in many formal and informal ways. Our own university, Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Sweden, is no exception and has always had many academic and educational partnerships. In recent years, however, new partnerships have begun to evolve with industry, private foundations, philanthropists, and patient organizations. These partnerships clearly present new challenges in terms of legal obligations, funding, intellectual property, and confidentiality, but they also offer new opportunities to tackle challenges in biomedical research that academia cannot easily manage on its own. In particular, new research collaborations beyond traditional government‐funded schemes are likely to benefit translational research to test and develop new therapies. With these new kinds of partnerships in mind, the meeting Days of Molecular Medicine 2015 was held at KI to discuss how such collaborations are beginning to change human healthcare research. Karolinska …