This paper draws attention to the similarities between the response of the major pancreatic ducts and the luminal gastrointestinal tract to injury. In chronic inflammation of both of these tissues, cells appear which appear to have the capability of secreting epidermal growth factor/urogastrone, and it is proposed that this peptide has the ability to induce the expression of a series of further peptides, the trefoil peptides pS2 and hSP. These peptides have been shown to have motogenic effects on epithelial cells, and it is proposed that the further study of their expression in pancreatic diseases, and of their action of the pancreatic epithelium, will prove productive.