The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom.

Overseen by incoming Director of Finance Ian Macgregor, this marked the beginning of a period of financial growth that saw the trust's value increase by almost £14 billion in 14 years, as their interests moved beyond the bounds of the pharmaceutical industry.

In 2000, the Wellcome name disappeared from the drug business altogether when GlaxoWellcome merged with SmithKline Beecham, to form GlaxoSmithKline plc.

[19] Wellcome Trust collaborated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Mastercard to fund the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, launching in March 2020 with an initial $125 million in backing.

[22] The Wellcome Trust plays an important role in encouraging publication of research in open access repositories[23] such as Europe PubMed Central (EuropePMC).

[citation needed] In 2016, the Wellcome Trust partnered with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to launch the Open Science Prize[24] to "help develop services, tools and platforms that enable open content to be discovered, assessed and re-used in ways that will advance discovery and spark innovation.

The galleries show a small sample of works from Sir Henry Wellcome's collection, and host a programme of events and exhibitions.

[citation needed] The Wellcome Trust runs an annual photography prize which aims to explore "the human side of three urgent health challenges".

[33] It was Wellcome's first Global Monitor and was intended to "provide robust evidence on how public attitudes vary across different demographic groups and countries.

"[34] In August 2014, the Wellcome Trust bought the Co-operative Group's farm business (renamed Farmcare) for £249 million.