BALTIMORE, United States — Fifteen-year-old Heman Bekele has been named TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year for his creation — a soap that could treat skin cancer.

The compound-based Skin Cancer Treating Soap (SCTS) incorporates the cancer-fighting drug imiquimod and is Bekele’s solution to delivering a lifesaving drug in a more affordable treatment plan.

According to the TIME report, Bekele, who was born in Addis Ababa before migrating to the United States with his family when he was four, recalls that some of his earliest memories were of seeing labourers working in the sun, usually with no protection for their skin.

He told TIME that his parents taught him and his sisters to cover up, noting the dangers of too much exposure to the sun without sunscreen or proper clothing.

“When I was younger, I didn’t think much of it, but when I came to America, I realised what a big problem the sun and ultraviolet radiation is when you’re exposed to it for a long time,” Bekele told TIME.

Later on in life, he discovered imiquimod, a cancer fighting drug that usually comes in the form of a cream and prescribed as part of wider cancer treatment plan. He then experimented with the drug in the form of a bar of soap.

His experiments led to the creation of the Skin Cancer Treating Soap which earned him the title of “America’s Top Young Scientist” in the 3M Young Scientist Challenge at age 14.

Now, Bekele is actively working in a lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, hoping to bring his dream to fruition, the TIME report said.

But Bekele knows there is much more to do —including testing the soap, patenting it and getting Food and Drug Administration certification — before his dreams can come true.