INS and Autoimmunity: Solid data supporting this mechanism have been developed by decades of experiments, notably for insulin peptides in autoimmune diabetes (Unanue, 2014) However, many studies have found that multiple self-antigens are recognized by T cells clones isolated from the earliest stages of disease development, suggesting that HLA-D associated autoimmunity is initiated against multiple self-antigens by a heterogeneous T cell response.