Spokesman says Joe Biden is receiving radiation treatment for prostate cancer

A spokesman for former US President Joe Biden said that he is receiving radiation therapy as part of his treatment for prostate cancer.

The spokesman also said that Biden (82 years old) is undergoing hormone treatment, without providing any other details.

The radiation treatment is expected to last five weeks and marks a new point in his care, a source told NBC News.

in May, Biden’s office announced that he had been diagnosed with a more aggressive form of the diseaseWhich spread to his bones. This discovery came after the Democratic politician reported urinary symptoms that led doctors to discover a small nodule in his prostate.

Biden’s office said at the time that he had been “diagnosed with prostate cancer, which has a Gleason score of 9 (Group V) with metastasis to the bone.”

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be sensitive to hormones, allowing for effective management.”

Gleeson’s score of nine means his disease is classified as “high-grade” and that the cancer cells can spread quickly, according to Cancer Research UK.

A person close to Biden said the former president was in good health and responding to treatment, CBS, the BBC’s news partner, reported, while another source told the channel that the radiation began “a few weeks ago” in Philadelphia.

Biden left office in January as the oldest US president in history, and questions about his health haunted his first term, prompting him to end his bid for re-election late in his campaign.

Instead, his former deputy Kamala Harris ran as the Democratic presidential nominee, losing to current US President Donald Trump.

For many years, Biden has championed cancer research.

In 2022, he and his wife, Jill Biden, relaunched the Cancer Moonshot initiative with the goal of mobilizing research efforts to prevent more than four million cancer deaths by 2047.

Biden lost his eldest son, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015.

The former president and vice president were also treated twice for skin cancer, in 2023 and 2025.

In recent months, Biden has largely retreated from the public eye.

In May, he gave an interview to the BBC – his first since leaving the White House – where He admitted that the decision to step down from the 2024 race was “difficult.”

Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer in men, after skin cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that 13 out of every 100 men will develop prostate cancer at some point in their lives. She says age is the most common risk factor.