Cancer research has surged in the past three decades, but a cure remained elusive– that was until recently. Heman Bekele, a fifteen year old scientist and sophomore at Woodson High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, invented a soap that will one day be able to treat and hopefully prevent various types of skin cancer.
Heman was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, before emigrating to America at the age of 4. From the age of 7, he started mixing all sorts of chemicals together in what he calls “potions”. In October of 2023, he won $25,000 as the winner of Discovery Education and 3M Company’s Young Scientist Challenge. Heman submitted a video explaining his idea involving imiquimod which won the 3M challenge. Imiquimod is a cream medication used to treat multiple types of skin cancer. He took an “affordable and accessible approach” (PBS News), and decided to transform imiquimod into something that anyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, could access: a bar of soap. The concept of his Skin Cancer Treating Soap (SCTS) was that “even though the soaps and suds will be washed away by the soap, there will still be all of the medicinal components stuck there by the lipid based nanoparticle” (PBS News). He hopes his soap will be able to be used in early stages of cancer, and in the future, can be used alongside other treatments.
SCTS targets melanoma, which is a specific and serious type of skin cancer. The main types of skin cancer are squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma and melanoma. Although melanoma is far less common than the other forms of skin cancer, it is amongst the deadliest. It is more prone to invade nearby tissue and spread to other parts of the body like the lymph and blood vessels. Melanoma starts in the melanocytes. Melanocytes are the cells that give skin cells its pigment, and its pigment is called melanin. Around one third of melanoma cases develop from preexisting moles. Heman sought his inspiration for treating skin cancer upon observing the harmful effects of skin cancer on people in Ethiopia.
His ambition doesn’t just stop at a project: he hopes to “turn it into a nonprofit organization so that [he] can provide equitable and accessible skin cancer treatment to truly as many people as possible”. Using the prize money from the contest, Heman says that “a lot of it’s going to go towards the project itself. There’s a lot of things like certifications, FDA certification, clinical trials, all of those”. Heman spends a lot of his time researching in a lab while being sponsored by Vito Rebecca, a molecular biologist and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Although his soap is still in the testing phase and also has not yet started clinical trials on humans, Heman works at the Baltimore lab alongside Rebecca, balancing his research and schoolwork. Also named TIME’s kid of the year, Heman’s ambition and passion for acting in science, helping people, and advancing cancer research will inspire many more to take his path.
