BALTIMORE (AP) - Vice President Joe Biden says he's confident Congress will approve the $1 billion that President Barack Obama has requested for cancer research.
Biden made the comment Tuesday at the launch of a new immunotherapy institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Obama has likened the accelerated quest for cancer cures to a manned mission to the moon. Biden says the proposal has overwhelming bipartisan support.
Obama is requesting $755 million in addition to the $195 million in new cancer funding Congress approved in its budget deal last year.
Biden's son Beau died from brain cancer in May.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others donated $125 million to create the new institute at Hopkins, focusing on using patients' immune systems to destroy cancer cells.