WORCESTER, Mass. - Ahead of World Pancreatic Cancer Day on Thursday, the Pancreatic Cancer Alliance held a symposium at UMass Chan Medical School featuring physicians and researchers.

Pancreatic cancer has one of the lowest survival rates among all major cancers and yet the alliance said not many people know enough about it. Pancreatic cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the country and has a five-year survival rate of 11%.

The alliance works with UMass Memorial Health at their High-Risk Pancreas Clinic, where people with a family history of the disease can be screened.

"Watching people and doing the high-risk clinic are really the only way right now, for sure, that we can find the disease early and it’s not always the case,” said Audrey Kurlan-Marcy, the chair and co-found of the Pancreatic Cancer Alliance. “Of course, if people don’t come in to do this genetic testing, then they don’t know. But the more you know and if you catch it early, that’s the big piece of it. If you catch it early, we can do something about it."

"The most common symptom actually is pain or indigestion often accompanied by weight loss” said Dr. Giles Whalen, professor of surgery at UMass Chan Medical School. “If you have somebody who is losing weight and has turned diabetic and has indigestion, that’s a very troubling set of symptoms."

There is no cure for pancreatic cancer or known causes of the cancer. The Pancreatic Cancer Alliance said all of the money they raise goes to research and patient care.