TIME is honoring a 15-year-old for his contributions to potentially helping treat and cure skin cancer!
Heman Bekele has been seeing the effects of the sun on people’s skin since he was a young boy growing up in Ethiopia. He noticed many people working in the sun without protecting their skin, TIME reported in a story celebrating the teenager being named its “Kid of the Year.”
Years later, after his family immigrated to the U.S., 7-year-old Bekele got a chemistry set for Christmas that came with sodium hydroxide. It was then that he began learning the power of chemical reactions.
Around that time, he also started thinking more critically about the potential damage that prolonged sun exposure can have on the human body.
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“When I was younger, I didn’t think much of it, but when I came to America, I realized what a big problem the sun and ultraviolet radiation is when you’re exposed to it for a long time,” Bekele told TIME.
He became interested in the research surrounding skin cancer and its treatment.
“I’m really passionate about skin cancer research,” he told the magazine. “Whether it’s my own research or what’s happening in the field.”
Photograph by Dina Litovsky for TIME
He eventually learned about imiquimod, a drug that was already approved to treat some forms of skin cancer. When used in a cream form, it can also help destroy tumors.
But Bekele thought back to his early years in Ethiopia and wondered if there was a way to use imiquimod to treat earlier stages of skin cancer and make it more accessible to people of different socio-economic classes.
“Almost everyone uses soap and water for cleaning. So soap would probably be the best option,” Bekele said about why he decided to develop a soap. The bar of soap would cost people significantly less than the current $40,000 price of the cream.
In a video that accompanied the TIME article and explained how the soap works, Bekele explained that it contained nanoparticles “loaded” with imiquimod, which helps ensure that the drug stays on the skin at a “very molecular level” even when the soap is washed off.
His idea has potential according to scientists in skin cancer research and treatment, as well as the judges of 3M company and Discovery Education’s 2023 Young Scientist Challenge, who named Bekele its winner and awarded him $25,000.
Photograph by Dina Litovsky for TIME
There are still many stages to go before the soap is approved to be used as treatment, but when Bekele isn’t in school at Woodson High School in Fairfax County, Va., he does research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
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Molecular biologist Vito Rebecca invited Bekele to use the lab at any time, and the teenager has since accepted the offer. Rebecca, who is also a professor at Johns Hopkins, now acts as Bekele’s sponsor. The duo has been using mice at the lab to run basic tests for the soap.
According to TIME, Bekele potentially has about a decade to go before the soap is approved as a cancer treatment. In the meantime, he’s promoting it in presentations; that is when he’s not playing in the marching band and enjoying a game of chess.
