TIME magazine has chosen 15-year-old scientist Heman Bekele from Fairfax, Virginia, as 2024 Kid of the Year after he developed an affordable soap bar to treat skin cancers.
“I’m really passionate about skin cancer research, whether it's my own research or what's happening in the field. It's absolutely incredible to think that one day my bar of soap will be able to make a direct impact on somebody else life. That’s the reason I started this all in the first place.”
Heman Bekele, Speaking to TIME magazine
TIME selects Kid of the Year by inviting nominations from young leaders who passionately contribute in various fields like social justice, science, and business. Then the editors and writers go through the submissions, and after research, they find the children who are between the ages of 8 and 16 years old. Then, as part of the selection process, a team of ‘TIME for Kids’ kid reporters weigh in on the finalists.
Heman Bekele was born in Addis Ababa but, at the age of 4, moved to the US with his family. During this time, he discovered that exposure to the sun's UV radiation can harm the skin. He was always advised by his parents to apply sunscreen and have proper protection when outdoors. This made him think about developing something to help the people.
In an interview with the TIME, Heman Bekele revealed that since he was 3, he started conducting his own science experiments by mixing whatever he got and leaving them overnight to see what results he would get. The ingredients used by him are dish soap, laundry detergent, and common household chemicals. He used to research various chemical reactions online and learned that sodium hydroxide and aluminum hydroxide when mixed, produce heat.
But the most changing part of his life was when he received a chemistry kit as part of his 7th birthday. That kit included sodium hydroxide. Heman Bekele said, “I thought that this could be a solution to energy, to making an unlimited supply, but I almost started a fire.”
To treat skin cancers, a topical cream containing a drug named imiquimod was found to be effective as it works by destroying tumors. But the cost of the treatment was very high. When Heman Bekele came across this treatment, he pondered making a bar of soap using the lifesaving drug imiquimod, which can be readily available to patients at a much more affordable cost as the treatment of skin cancer is very expensive. Heman Bekele was quoted as saying “Almost everyone uses soap and water for cleaning. So soap would probably be the best option.”
After brainstorming the idea, the next step was to implement it, which was the most complicated stage. The drug imiquimod had to be incorporated into a soap, and the drug should leave a moisturizing effect rather than getting washed away. The soap is to be prepared so that the drug imiquimod is incorporated with the lipid-based nanoparticle so that even after the soap is washed away, the medicinal components should stay on, which is a novel approach to fighting skin cancer.
He needed support to put his idea into action. At that time he came across the 3M Young Scientist challenge and submitted his idea through a video. Soon he was invited to the company's headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, to pitch his idea in front of a panel of judges. In the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, he was mentored by Deborah Isabelle.
I got really lucky. Last year was my first year participating as a mentor in the Young Scientist Challenge, and I was paired with Heman. He’s an incredible, passionate, very inspiring young man.
Deborah Isabelle, Mentor, 3M Young Scientist Challenge
He was declared the winner and received a prize amount of $25,000. With the amount, he could continue his research, but he needed a lab to experiment.
In February, a networking event was hosted by the Melanoma Research Alliance in Washington, D.C., and Heman Bekele attended it. Vito Rebecca, a molecular biologist and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, was also present at this event. During this event, the CEO of the Melanoma Research Alliance introduced Heman Bekele to Vito Rebecca. During their conversation, Vito Rebecca invited Heman to his lab as he lived nearby. Heman agreed, and Rebecca decided to sponsor him and act as his principal investigator. Since then, they have started their experimentation by injecting mice with the cancer strains and preparing to apply lipid-bound, imiquimod-infused soap to the mice and determining the results. But there is still a long way to go before the product is available in the market for public use as it has to undergo testing, patenting procedure and FDA certification.
Heman Bekele's idea of making a soap bar for skin cancer accessible to the whole world is truly commendable. He aims for a day when his health-giving soap can be used in early-stage cancers—including Stage 0, when there is just a small growth that has not yet had much effect on the surface of the skin—and then in later stages when it would be an adjunct to other treatments.
REFERENCES:
1. Kluger, J. (2024, August 15). Heman Bekele is TIME’s 2024 kid of the year. TIME. https://time.com/6996507/heman-bekele/
(Input from various media sources)
(Rehash/Dr. Siddiqua Parveen/MSM)
