Surrey boy's leukemia trial offers hope as new cancer-matching research launches

When Beckett Tessarolo was nine months old, unusual clinginess and skin colour changes sent his South Surrey parents to the doctor. Bloodwork revealed acute lymphoblastic leukemia. At midnight, their doctor knocked on their door with instructions to head straight to BC Children's Hospital. Beckett and his mother didn't come home for 57 days.

That was February 2020, two weeks before the pandemic shut everything down.

Now seven, Beckett is in Grade 2 at Crescent Park Elementary, busy with hockey and baseball, "just the happiest kid," his mother Melanie said. "You would not know it looking at him."

Beckett spent eight months in hospital during the initial phase of a clinical trial called TINI, a North America-wide early-phase study. The trial added two new drugs—bortezomib and vorinostat—to an already "very intensive" chemotherapy protocol.

His parents had 24 hours to decide: enroll Beckett in the experimental trial or proceed with standard treatment. Melanie recalled they "leaned into the advice of the doctors." One oncologist, when asked which option she'd choose for her own kids, answered simply: "I believed in science."

All four B.C. children enrolled in the TINI trial showed improved outcomes. Those two drugs are now part of an upcoming TINI2 trial, which will add a third agent to the regimen.

"The hope was they would improve outcomes for these babies with the hardest-to-treat leukemia," Dr. Rebecca Deyell, clinical instructor in UBC's Department of Pediatrics, explained. Infant leukemia cases are typically more aggressive and harder to treat if they relapse than cases diagnosed in older children.

His story was highlighted in September as part of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, coinciding with the launch of OPTIMISE, a new clinical trial being conducted across Canada in collaboration with Australia. OPTIMISE is designed to match children, adolescents and young adults with high-risk, hard-to-treat cancers to targeted therapies based on the genetic makeup of their tumours.

Melanie said what Beckett's recovery has meant to her family cannot be overstated. "Enough time has passed that you'll run into people that don't know he was ever sick."