Pancreas

The pancreas is an organ that functions as a gland and is involved in digestion of food. It is both an endocrine and exocrine gland. As an endocrine gland it releases hormones, such as insulin ^[1]. As an exocrine gland, it secretes digestive enzymes. 

Digestion

In the digestive system, the pancreas behaves as an exocrine gland. The acinar cells of the pancreas secrete digestive enzymes into the lumen of the small intestine, such as chymotrypsin, carboxypeptidase, colipase and phospholipase ^[2]. These digestive enzymes are secreted as inactive zymogens, which are then activated in the small intestine by the enzyme trypsin (which itself must first be converted from its inactive form, trypsinogen, by brush border enteropeptidases in the small intestine) ^[3].

The pancreas is stimulated to release these digestive enzymes in several different ways, including neural signals from the parasympathetic nervous system, the presence of food and subsequent distension of the small intestine, and the hormone CCK (cholecystokinin) ^[4].

References

1. ↑ http://www.buzzle.com/articles/function-of-pancreas.html; Ujwal Deshmukh; Buzzle Intelligent Life On The Web; Function Of Pancreas
2. ↑ Biochemistry, Sixth edition; Berg J.M., Tymoczko J.L., Stryer L.; W.H.Freeman and Company; New York; 2007
3. ↑ Silverthorn D. et al., (2009) Human Physiology, an Integrated Approach, 5th Edition, San Francisco: Pearson Benjamin Cummings
4. ↑ Silverthorn D. et al., (2009) Human Physiology, an Integrated Approach, 5th Edition, San Francisco: Pearson Benjamin Cummings