For the third day in a row, No­vo Nordisk has obe­si­ty news.

The Dan­ish be­he­moth will work with a rel­a­tive­ly un­known biotech co-found­ed by MIT's Robert Langer to cre­ate oral bi­o­log­ics for obe­si­ty, di­a­betes and their co­mor­bidi­ties.

Wednes­day's deal comes with as much as $2.1 bil­lion in pay­out po­ten­tial for the small start­up, called Viv­tex. The com­pa­nies did­n't dis­close how much of that kicks in­to gear at the out­set.

No­vo has made dozens of car­diometa­bol­ic li­cens­ing deals, col­lab­o­ra­tion pacts and ac­qui­si­tions over the past few years as it's worked to main­tain a lead­ing po­si­tion in the field. Some of those tie-ups have in­clud­ed oral small mol­e­cule ap­proach­es to treat­ing di­a­betes and obe­si­ty. Now, it's do­ing an oral bi­o­log­ics deal. No­vo was the first phar­ma to com­mer­cial­ly launch an oral bi­o­log­ic with Ry­bel­sus more than five years ago and snagged clear­ance for oral We­govy last month.

Alk­er­mes’ long­time CEO will step down this sum­mer.

Richard Pops plans to pass the torch to COO Blair Jack­son, Alk­er­mes an­nounced Wednes­day, wrap­ping up a ca­reer that spanned sev­en US pres­i­den­cies. Pops’ fi­nal day will be Ju­ly 31, af­ter which he’ll con­tin­ue as chair of the board.

Pops came to Alk­er­mes as CEO in 1991, lead­ing the com­pa­ny for three and a half decades. When Pops first joined, George H.W. Bush was pres­i­dent, the So­vi­et Union was on the verge of col­lapse, and South Africa was dis­man­tling its apartheid gov­ern­ment. Mari­ah Carey re­leased four chart-top­ping songs. Fred­die Mer­cury and Dr. Seuss died.

Af­ter search­ing for buy­ers for its "un­der­per­form­ing" as­sets, Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries has se­cured two deals.

It will sell some of its Eu­ro­pean dis­cov­ery ser­vices to the da­ta and ser­vices com­pa­ny IQVIA, while its CD­MO and cell so­lu­tions busi­ness­es will go to the pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm GI Part­ners, it said in a Wednes­day re­lease.

Charles Riv­er’s stock CRL was up 2.45% on Wednes­day.

Last week, the com­pa­ny’s CEO Jim Fos­ter said Charles Riv­er was in dis­cus­sions with po­ten­tial buy­ers, af­ter an­nounc­ing its plans in No­vem­ber to di­vest “un­der­per­form­ing or non-core as­sets” that make up 7% of its to­tal rev­enue.

IQVIA is pay­ing $145 mil­lion, with the po­ten­tial for an ad­di­tion­al $10 mil­lion, and will take over five fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing a drug dis­cov­ery site in Cam­bridge, UK and phar­ma­col­o­gy fa­cil­i­ties in Freiburg, Ger­many; Kuo­pio, Fin­land; Por­tishead, UK; and Lei­den, the Nether­lands.