HONG KONG – New York and San Diego-based Zentalis Pharmaceuticals Inc. has gained $20 million in a series A financing round to support a Chinese joint venture called Zentera Therapeutics.

Fountain Therapeutics Inc., a California company working to create treatments for age-related diseases, said Khosla Ventures has led a $6 million series A-1 financing of the startup, with participation from Nan Fung Life Sciences, which earlier contributed $5 million to the round.

Though Quralis Corp., of Cambridge, Mass., has been developing its pipeline for more than three years, the company now has a $42 million series A in hand to continue researching and developing therapies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia.

DUBLIN – After 18 months in stealth mode, Ventus Therapeutics Inc. has emerged with $60 million in series A funding and big ambitions to bring insights from structural biology to bear on two key aspects of innate immunity, inflammasome activation and cGAS-Sting signaling.

Baltimore-based Lifesprout Inc., a Johns Hopkins University startup, said it has closed a $28.5 million series A financing. It is planning to use the proceeds to support clinical development of therapeutic products from its Regenerative Matrix platform.

Privately held Swanbio Therapeutics Inc., of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., completed a $52 million expanded series A financing designed to boost the company’s R&D of adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based gene therapies to treat adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) and other rare, monogenic neurological diseases.

San Francisco-based RDMD Inc. netted $14 million in series A money fueling an approach designed to generate clinical evidence that will speed drug development in rare diseases.

LONDON – Amphista Ltd. becomes the latest to join the growing band of proteolysis targeting chimera (Protac) specialists, arriving on the scene with a $7.5 million series A and what it says is a new approach to targeted protein degradation (TPD).