Ann Arbor-based Velcura Therapeutics Inc. said Tuesday it has received a $1.3 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health. The money will continue Velcura's work on discovering new drugs that stimulate bone formation in people. Velcura received a Phase I grant of $224,000 in 2003 for similar work. The company is developing a drug that can be taken as a pill that both stimulates bone formation and inhibits bone loss aimed at the treatment of osteoporosis and other bone-loss disorders. The drug is expected to enter clinical trials in early 2006.Velcura founder Michael W. Long has received more than $13 million in NIH funding for research, which he began as a professor at the University of Michigan. While at UM he and his research team discovered how to grow human bone outside the body. He went on to use this intellectual property to build Velcura, named for its goal of find ing "swift cures" (or in Latin, "velocitas cura" -- get it?) for those suffering from bone diseases.