The 2025 Pittcon Conference & Expo was perhaps the first major laboratory conference to occur since news of potential NIH funding cuts to labs surfaced earlier in the year.
If enacted, decreases in NIH grants would likely create budget shortfalls for academic and other research labs. In talking to researchers, vendors, and conference organizers, they acknowledged the funding decreases would sting while also saying the cuts would not undermine science.
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“We don’t know where things are going, and we don’t know how long it will last,” said Andrew Whitley, PhD, vice president and field officer for life sciences at lab instrument company Horiba.
In 2025, Horiba has put more emphasis on sales to the healthcare and biosciences markets, which lands the potential NIH funding cuts to labs in the laps of new sales prospects.
“Academic sales might struggle, and government sales might struggle” if the NIH cuts happen, Whitley said. Horiba’s life sciences-based business in Europe and Asia continues to be strong, he added.
A similar tone was echoed by Dominic Gostick, PhD, BSc, chief technology officer at science technology firm PerkinElmer.
“We’re an international company,” Gostcik said during an interview at Pittcon. The company does business in the US, Canada, Europe, and China, for example, and must deal with fluctuating conditions in each region. “Politics is politics.”
NIH funding cuts to labs center on indirect cost rates
As part of overall US federal government cost slashing, the NIH has been in the crosshairs of President Trump’s new administration. Guidance issued by the NIH on February 7 lowered the indirect cost rate to 15 percent for new and existing research grants the agency issues. The NIH reported that grants had averaged 27 to 28 percent in indirect cost rates, with some as high as 60 percent.
The NIH’s move was quickly challenged in court, and just this week, a federal judge blocked the funding cuts while the case proceeds, Time reported. Based on recent history, it seems likely that the Trump administration will appeal that decision.
Indirect cost covers a wide swath, including maintenance of research labs, IT services, and health and safety compliance, according to a University of Michigan update.
The NIH cap “would result in a significant decrease in the amount that U-M receives from the federal government to conduct vital research,” the university said, noting its negotiated indirect cost rate with the federal government was 56 percent.
Kimberly Cooper, a developmental geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, told Lab Manager’s sibling brand, The Scientist, that NIH funds support research staff, including graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.
“I’ve got six staff members that are dependent on me to pay them, and I am dependent on money that I am told is there to be able to project how long I can keep them,” Cooper said.
Public angst over science will pass, Pittcon president predicts
There’s little doubt that mistrust in science has risen, driven in part by political, socio-economic, and post-pandemic factors. From that perspective, there may be more public support than normal for NIH funding cuts to labs.
However, some at Pittcon chose a more optimistic tone about the science profession. “There is a black eye on science,” Heather Juzwa, BS, 2025 president at Pittcon, said during a press conference. “But I think this, too, shall pass … We need science, and I do think that the world will figure it out.”
Gostick, who described himself as a “mass spectrometrist at heart,” agreed with that notion.
“It’s clear that the scientific breakthroughs are not going to go away,” he added. “But there may be changes in funding here or there.”
