Biliary pancreatitis is the leading cause of acute pancreatitis in both children and adults. A
proposed mechanism is the reflux of bile into the pancreatic duct. Bile acid exposure causes
pancreatic acinar cell injury through a sustained rise in cytosolic Ca 2+. Thus, it would be
clinically relevant to know the targets of this aberrant Ca 2+ signal. We hypothesized that the
Ca 2+-activated phosphatase calcineurin is such a Ca 2+ target. To examine calcineurin
activation, we infected primary acinar cells from mice with an adenovirus expressing the …