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OCIs Must Be Considered During M&A Activity

Client Alert | 1 min read | 04.01.10

In McCarthy/Hunt, JV (Feb. 16, 2010) and B.L. Harbert-Brasfield & Gorrie, JV (Feb. 16, 2010), GAO found that the awardee had both an "unequal access to information" and a "biased ground rules" OCI when a firm, which was negotiating to acquire the awardee's design subcontractor, had performed procurement planning and development services for the procurement at issue, including preparation of design documents, plans, specifications, and cost estimates. GAO presumed prejudicial impact from the OCIs and recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers eliminate the awardee from the competition because (i) the awardee could have had access to helpful information beyond what was disclosed in the solicitation (e.g., the agency's unstated priorities, preferences, and dislikes), and (ii) the competition could have been skewed in favor of the awardee by virtue of the fact that the entity negotiating to acquire the awardee's design subcontractor played a role in preparing the solicitation requirements.

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Client Alert | 9 min read | 10.21.26

Artificial Intelligence in Life Sciences: Reliability of AI-Generated Evidence in Drug Discovery and Development

The life sciences sector is uniquely vulnerable to the inherent risks of AI-generated evidence in drug development and discovery. This client alert focuses on five core challenges: hallucinations, skewed predictions from unrepresentative training data, the opacity of AI reasoning, input sensitivity that undermines reproducibility, and adversarial manipulation of training data. To address these risks, companies should use experimental validation and human oversight as the common legal and regulatory safety net. This entails among other measures auditing AI outputs, characterizing training data, and structural oversight. Companies also should prepare for evolving frameworks and guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Union (EU) that address use of AI in drug discovery and development .  ...