BALTIMORE, USA – 15-year-old Heman Bekele has been named TIME magazine’s Child of the Year 2024 for developing a soap that can treat skin cancer.
The substance-based Skin Cancer Treating Soap (SCTS) contains the cancer drug imiquimod and is Bekele’s solution for delivering a life-saving drug as part of a more cost-effective treatment plan.
According to the TIME report, Bekele, who was born in Addis Ababa and immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of four, recalls that his earliest memories include laborers working in the sun, usually wearing no protection for their skin.
He told TIME that his parents taught him and his sisters to cover up and warned them about the dangers of spending too much time in the sun without sunscreen or appropriate clothing.
“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 are when you’re exposed to them for long periods of time,” Bekele told TIME.
He later discovered imiquimod, a cancer drug that is usually available in the form of a cream and is prescribed as part of a broader cancer treatment plan. He then experimented with the drug in the form of a bar of soap.
His experiments led to the development of soap to treat skin cancer, which earned him the title of “America’s Best Young Scientist” in the 3M Young Scientist Challenge at age 14.
Bekele is currently actively working in a laboratory at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and hopes to realize his dream, the TIME report said.
But Bekele knows there is much more to do – including testing the soap, patenting it and obtaining certification from the Food and Drug Administration – before his dreams can become a reality.
