At 15, Herman Bekele has just won the title de Kid of the Year by the magazine Time. Why such a gratification?
Originally from Ethiopia, he arrived in the United States at the age of 4 with his family, and is said to have invented a soap capable of preventing and treating several forms of skin cancer, including melanoma, a potentially aggressive tumor which, if treated at a late stage, can metastasize and lead to the death of the patient.
In France, 17,922 new cases of melanoma were diagnosed in 2023 and it caused 1,980 deaths in 2018. Worldwide, 132,000 melanomas are detected each year according to the World Health Organization.
Imiquimod at the heart of the invention
Concretely, what is Herman Bekele’s idea? It was born when this chemistry enthusiast heard about imiquimod, an antitumor drug that modifies the immune response.
The drug comes in the form of a cream, indicated for the topical treatment of external genital and perianal warts in adults, but also against a form of skin cancer, small superficial basal cell carcinomas.
Several studies have also shown that the drug could be effective against melanoma. Herman Bekele then wondered if it would be possible to make it a less expensive treatment, easier for patients to access and use.
He then thought about an object that everyone uses, regardless of their socio-economic class.. “Almost everyone uses soap and water to clean themselves, so soap would probably be the best option,” he explains to Time Magazine.
Mixing the drug with a regular bar of soap may not be enough, as the soap’s lather eliminates the therapeutic power of imiquimod. The solution could then be to combine the soap with lipid-based nanoparticles that would persist on the skin after the soap is removed.
First tests coming soon
After winning $25,000 as the first place winner in a competition, he was then able to find a professional laboratory to host his research after meeting Professor Vito Rebecca, a biologist at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (United States).
For six months, both have been conducting basic research on mice. This involves injecting strains of skin cancer and then applying lipid soap, into which imiquimod has been introduced.
The first tests will take place soon, but there is still a long way to go before the soap sees the light of day… if it ever sees the light of day.
In addition to the tests, and only if they prove encouraging, all that remains is to patent the soap and obtain certification from the Food and Drug administrationthe U.S. drug certification agency.
In all, if this melanoma soap gets marketing approval, it could take a decade in total, Time estimates.
But Herman Bekele has time, at just 15 years old. He hopes to make it a treatment for skin cancers at an early stage, in particular stage 0 when there is only a small growth on the skin. But also at higher stages, in addition to other treatments.
Source : Time, 15 août 2024, Dreaming of a cure par Jeffrey Kluger – Vidal.fr – Institut national du cancer – OMS
