Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death, and doctors are clamoring for a better way to diagnose it. A Zionsville-based startup is creating a lung biopsy device that it says gives clinicians something they’ve never had before: a smaller needle and a safer tissue-collection process that produces a clearer diagnosis for the patient. Pave LLC leaders say it meets a critical need as personalized medicine transforms cancer treatment, because the advances demand a better biopsy.

“If you’re a patient, one of the things you really don’t want to hear is, ‘You went through this biopsy, you went through all this pain, and the tissue we received from this biopsy was non-diagnostic,’” says Pave President Doug Knoll. “In other words, you’re going to have to do this biopsy again.”