Pancreas juice travels through a tree of tiny pipes. Ductal cells line those pipes and pour in a watery juice that calms stomach acid.
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Your pancreas has a tree of pipes called ducts. Small pipes join into bigger ones, until one main pipe empties into your small intestine.
Ductal cells line these pipes. In small pipes they are short and cube-shaped. In the big pipes they are taller. They stand side by side in a ring to make the wall.
Scroll up to the 3D model and press Add juice to watch the juice flow through the pipe.
Food leaves the stomach full of acid. When S cells in the gut sense it, they send out a hormone called secretin.
Secretin tells the ductal cells to pour lots of watery juice full of bicarbonate into the pipes. It washes the enzymes down to the small intestine and calms the acid there, so the enzymes can work.
Bicarbonate is a lot like baking soda. If you mix baking soda with vinegar, it fizzes because it's calming the acid in the vinegar!