Accelerating Cancer Research through citizen engagement

Founded in 2013, Seintinelles is a non-profit organisation dedicated to public participation in cancer research. Our mission is to connect French citizens with researchers in order to accelerate, improve and humanise scientific studies.

Our studies

How does it work ?

Sign up

Registration is very simple; citizens only have to answer a few questions. Of course, all this data is protected and secure.
A newsletter sent once a month

in which we share the studies.
Of course, Seintinelles are always free to participate or not !
Study participation

Participation depends on the criteria being sought. Most studies are questionnaires or focus groups.

Our activities

Seintinelles is a community of more than 42,000 committed citizens: men, women, patients or not, whatever the type of cancer.

Together, they have participated in 67 research projects – mostly non-interventional, but not only – generating 114,000 unique participations and 29 scientific publications.

Email is our main medium for interacting with the community. But we also use social media to grow and engage the community

Over the past 3 years, we’ve run several research projects that are co-designed, co-led and co-implemented by a team of citizens and researchers working in pairs.

As a team, they have been able to identify new research questions that were previously unseen, and they collaborate at every step along the way.

We are currently working on digital tools and methodology/training kits to enable more researchers and more citizens to co-build and co-run research.

We aim to establish a balanced and reciprocal relationship between researchers and citizens.
This includes :

Presenting studies from a citizen’s rather than a researcher’s perspective, linking them to everyday life and emphasising the ultimate benefits.
Working with researchers to create a smooth and respectful research experience (e.g. optimising the length of questionnaires, refining the way certain questions are introduced, etc.).
Organising study results webinars to share knowledge and encourage open discussion.

Our scope : All cancers / Citizens / Academic research

Seintinelles, in numbers

Seintinelles is transforming cancer research by making it more inclusive, efficient, and impactful.

What our community says

I think that taking part in the surveys has been good for me: it’s given words to the difficulties I’ve encountered, given them legitimacy, made me aware that these difficulties, isolated experiences, are largely shared by other patients.

Seintinelles are people who want to contribute to the common good in healthcare. No one is better placed than patients to share their experiences.

Seintinelles can offer a more positive outlook on illness by providing an opportunity to help others.

Joining Seintinelles, being part of a group that supports research with kindness and respect, was an obvious choice for me. It gives me great satisfaction because it makes me feel useful.

Seintinelles is open exclusively to French citizens, but we actively collaborate with European research projects to enhance citizen engagement worldwide.