As you might imagine, there's a fair amount of research focused on pancreatic cancer detection. The thing that makes it hard to diagnose is that it's asymptomatic in the early stages, unlike many other forms of cancer.
There was a pretty interesting talk I went to back in undergrad around non-invasive imaging methods that could be used to catch it earlier. It's one of those things where broad screening is actually an ineffective use of resources, so, as far as I understand it, that's where the research is focused.
Thx. Feels like they'll figure out most things, so by the time we all die it will be from age-related illnesses they can't do anything about