Across the spectrum of diseases of the pancreas, cancer is the most formidable. Across the spectrum of cancers, the one that BYU men's basketball coach Dave Rose has contracted — pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer — isn't the worst.

It's rare and its course remains a medical mystery, but local oncologists and cellular biologists say the "zone defense of research" is forming that could give the coach a better prognosis than if he contracted the much faster-moving form.

The source of Rose's illness is the 6-inch long organ next to his backbone that is the final stage in the digestion process where protein, carbohydrates and fats become juices that literally keep the body going. It's most common condition when it malfunctions is diabetes — a disorder for nearly 98,000 Utahns, according to the state Department of Health — which is kept in check with daily injections of insulin that the pancreas is no longer able to control on its own. Complications from leaving it unchecked can cause kidney failure, blindness and heart disease.

Malignant tumors in the organ demand immediate attention, but a pancreas out of working order and unchecked can be every bit as lethal as cancer, as it proved to be for Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller.

Physicians and researchers contacted Thursday said they wouldn't presume to invade Rose's privacy with a possible prognosis, and said that how debilitating the disease proves is a matter of variables from how Rose's body withstands the battery of treatments, to how the cancer itself responds.

Cancer is a moving target within the moving target that is cell behavior, say Utah area scientists who are part of a group of researchers whose findings may not keep up with Rose's form of cancer but have definitely picked up the pace of the effort to unravel it.

Ways to slow the spread have been linked to better understanding of how cancer cells form. A University of Utah team has just shown that cancer cells are normal cells that don't self-destruct at the end of their natural lives. Instead of passing away, they become like cellular vampires, drawing blood and draining the life from the normal cells around them. As they lump together as tumors, they really get busy, reproducing and going out of control.

A deep look into what causes cells to move in unison to form human and animal embryos, sensory systems and heal wounds has been shown in a live model, displaying how groups of cells coordinate and then migrate to and, if cancerous, metastasize to different areas of the body. Defective cell migration coupled with the diverse ways cells signal and interact is the most promising finding into how defects in these interactions might lead to the progression of human disease.

The findings are adding to the recent promising evidence that will reveal the secret behind cancer's incredible tenacity: mutant stem cells continuously regenerating tumors.

If cancer cells can be shown to work in the way stem cells can replicate indefinitely, there's a good chance that healthy ones can interrupt the rogue ones and spare healthy tissue, stopping the rampant regeneration of cancer cells in their tracks.

E-mail: jthalman@desnews.com