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By Patrice Pages
December 12, 2023
It was the summer of 2023, and Heman Bekele was analyzing the results of his scientific experiment in the basement of his home in Annandale, Va. Bekele was studying the properties of tiny particles, called lipid nanoparticles, which he was hoping could one day be used to treat skin cancer. Amazingly, Bekele was just 14 years old, and he was about to start his freshman year in high school. Three years prior, as a middle school student, Bekele had come up with a novel idea: Instead of using expensive treatments for skin cancer, would it be possible to use a bar of soap? That bar of soap would contain drugs that would fight skin cancer directly on the skin. But who could help this young scientist-in-the-making pursue his idea?
At the time, Bekele didn’t know how to develop his idea further. He had read about skin cancer online and in magazines and scientific journals, but he wasn’t sure whether he would be taken seriously. With the encouragement of his science teacher and school counselor, Bekele reached out to scientists at Georgetown University and the University of Virginia and was pleasantly surprised that two scientists, one from each university, agreed to meet with him, hear him out, and help him advance the “bar of soap” idea. One of these scientists even invited Bekele to his lab to do research on identifying compounds that, if present in a bar of soap, would stay on the skin long enough to go through it.
“We asked ourselves questions like, ‘Which compounds stay on the skin, and when they do, how do they cross the skin?’,” Bekele says. “Then, we did computer simulations and data analysis to determine whether the compounds crossed the skin and could treat skin cancer.” For Bekele, doing scientific research in a lab was a dream come true. He was able to test his idea and figure out ways to think it through.
That first opportunity led to another in the form of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, a competition for students in grades 5–8 to do research under the mentorship of a 3M scientist. That summer, his mentor, Deborah Isabelle, a product engineering specialist at 3M, helped him set up experiments in which he would create a bar of soap – also called the saponification process – and include various compounds within that bar of soap. Isabelle also helped him develop computer simulations of how the compounds would go through the skin after the soap is washed off the skin.
“It was a trial-and-error process,” Isabelle says. “Many times, the compounds wouldn’t mix together. So, he and I needed to break down the problem into multiple questions and address these questions one by one.”
One of the things Bekele discovered through his computer simulations was that it would be possible for the nanoparticles to carry a class of skin cancer drugs, called imidazoquinolines, directly to skin cancer lesions. (Imidazoquinolines are present in creams used against skin cancer, as well as antiviral and antiallergic creams.) In that scenario, after a person would use the soap and then rinse it off, the lipid nanoparticles wouldn’t be washed away.
The idea of using lipid nanoparticles to treat diseases has been around for decades, but its first real-world application and success came from the two mRNA vaccines developed for COVID-19 by Pfizer and Moderna. Since the successful rollout of these vaccines in early 2021, many scientists have turned to lipid nanoparticles to treat other infectious diseases, cancers, autoimmune diseases, and genetic disorders. Bekele’s idea follows in the footsteps of these efforts.
The use of lipid nanoparticles in medicine is part of a research area called nanomedicine, in which nanomaterials are used to prevent, diagnose, monitor, and treat diseases. Nanomedicine is part of a broader field called nanotechnology, which has significantly changed the landscape of scientific research in the United States, especially since the creation of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) more than 20 years ago. Bekele hadn’t heard about nanotechnology or nanomedicine in his science classes at school, but now that he’s doing research in the field, he has become increasingly excited about the possibilities enabled by nanomedicine.
At the end of the summer of 2023, Bekele won the 3M challenge and received $25,000! He decided to use some of the money to buy resources to do more research, but he needed a professional lab to do the work. As he was attending a networking event hosted by the Melanoma Research Alliance, he was introduced to Vito Rebecca, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, who invited him to work in his lab.
This past summer, Bekele and Rebecca developed lipid nanoparticles that contain imidazoquinolines. Then, informed by the computer simulations he did the previous summer, they created a soap formulation that contains these lipid nanoparticles and tested it on mice with skin cancer.
Even though Bekele is now only 15 years old, his scientific curiosity and experience finding and working with research mentors has already put him on a path to becoming a scientist – and likely one of the youngest nanoscientists around! When Bekele was named 2024 TIME Magazine Kid of the Year, he stated, “I had a lot of mentors …, and they really did help me with not only getting the ingredients but also learning how to synthesize lipid-based nanoparticles.”
In addition to his mentors, Bekele also credits his parents for his achievements. Throughout his childhood, his parents fully supported him and told him and his two sisters that they could do whatever they set their minds to. “My parents have always encouraged us to pursue our goals and guided us along the way, especially when we were stuck or unsure of what to do,” Bekele says.
For Bekele, his goals were driven by his strong interest in science, which he sees as a critical way to solve problems, especially big ones – such as cancer – which affect people all over the world. “The possibilities of science are endless,” Bekele says. “There are always doors to open and ideas to create. That’s what keeps me going.” Fortunately for Bekele, he was able to find the help he needed to move his idea forward and bring it closer to reality.
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Patrice Pages is the Communications Director (contract staff) for the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office.
