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*****Dumping ground for The Daily Rex Chapman Tweet & other assorted interwebz stuff****

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Rex Chapman retweeted:



This is Heman Bekele.

Time just named him their "Kid of the Year" after he invented a bar of soap that can treat skin cancer.

It all started when received a chemistry set as a gift when he was 7 years old. After his family immigrated to America, he noticed that back home in Ethiopia people would work for long hours outdoorsy exposing themselves to dangerous amounts of UV rays, without any protective covering.

That made him curious about skin cancer. At 14 years old, he developed a bar of soap that has nanoparticles containing a drug called imiquimod, which is approved to treat some forms of cancer. His soap helps ensure that the drug stays on the skin at a "very molecular level" even when the soap is washed off.

Rather than making millions of dollars, his bar of soap costs just 50 cents, and he plans to create a non-profit to distribute it to communities in need.

When he's not attending high school, he does research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore

He's only 15.
 
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