In 2021, U.S. News & World Report ranked Wake Forest School of Medicine 48th best for research in the nation and 80th best for primary care.

Meanwhile, the death of Bowman Gray, the president of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem, also in 1935, led his family to consider how to best make use of $750,000 that he left to be put toward a community cause.

After the University of North Carolina rejected a chance to obtain the money because it did not want to leave Chapel Hill, Wake Forest's medical school dean, Coy Cornelius Carpenter, in 1939 helped to forge a deal for the funds.

[6] On April 7, 2000, developer David Shannon announced plans for a three-story building in Piedmont Triad Research Park in downtown Winston-Salem which would house the medical school's physician assistant program.

Tenants at the Innovation Quarter include the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), which was established in 2004 and has risen to national prominence.

WFIRM's scientists are working to engineer more than 30 different replacement tissues and organs and to develop healing cell therapies—all with the goal to cure, rather than merely treat, disease.

[6] In July 2016, the School of Medicine opened the Bowman Gray Center for Medical Education, a $50 million, state-of-the-art building in downtown Winston-Salem's Innovation Quarter.

The new campus occupies 168,000 square feet in a former R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company plant next to Wake Forest Biotech Place, with half the cost being paid for by historic tax credits.

During the first phase, Foundations, which is 18 months in length, basic science courses are integrated with both clinical and patient care organized by systems.

Hefner Salisbury Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences.

[39] On April 10, 2019, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and Atrium Health announced that the School of Medicine would have a second campus in Charlotte, North Carolina.

[41] More specific details were revealed in February 2021 including a seven-story tower, and on March 24, 2021, Atrium Health announced a 20-acre Innovation District at Baxter and McDowell Streets in the Midtown neighborhood of Charlotte.

The Innovation District, named The Pearl on March 3, 2022, will include the medical school, residential towers, a hotel, and retail and office space.