A middle-school teen has been named “America’s top young scientist” after developing a bar of soap that could be useful in the treatment of melanoma, a skin cancer that is diagnosed in about 100,000 people in the US each year and kills approximately 8,000.

Heman Bekele, a 14-year-old ninth grader from Annandale, Virginia, won the award after beating out nine other finalists.

“Curing cancer, one bar of soap at a time,” he said in his submission. “I have always been interested in biology and technology, and this challenge gave me the perfect platform to showcase my ideas,” he added.

He pitched his idea for a soap – the “skin cancer treating soap” – made from compounds that could reactivate dendritic cells that guard human skin, enabling them to fight cancer cells. In a video to the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, Bekele said he believed “that young minds can make a positive impact on the world”.

Bekele’s idea came from living in Ethiopia to the age of four where, he told the Washington Post, he had seen people constantly working under the hot sun: “I wanted