Joe Biden explains how he will lead an initiative to cure cancer

Vice President Joe Biden.
(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

During the State of the Union address Monday night, President Obama announced that he was entrusting Vice President Joe Biden with leading a national mission to find a cure for cancer.

Biden's son, Beau, died in 2015 from brain cancer, and on his Medium page, Biden said fighting cancer is "personal for me." There are several areas of research and care that "could be revolutionary," he said, and the goal of this initiative is to "seize the moment. To accelerate our efforts to progress towards a cure, and to unleash new discoveries and breakthroughs for other deadly diseases."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.