Joseph "Beau" Biden III, the son of Vice President Joe Biden, died Saturday after a long battle with brain cancer, according to the Washington Post.
Biden, 46, the oldest son of the vice president, had been admitted recently to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., the report says.
"The entire Biden family is saddened beyond words. We know that Beau's spirit will live on in all of us—especially through his brave wife, Hallie, and two remarkable children, Natalie and Hunter," Vice President Biden said in a statement that was released Saturday night.
President Barack Obama released a statement late Saturday saying that he and first lady Michelle Obama were grieving the loss and called Beau Biden "a good, big-hearted, devoutly Catholic and deeply faithful man, who made a difference in the lives of all he touched—and he lives on in their hearts."
"Beau took after Joe," the president said in the statement. "He studied the law, like his dad, even choosing the same law school. He chased a life of public service, like his dad, serving in Iraq and as Delaware's Attorney General.''
Biden was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard's Judge Advocate General Corps. He became one of his state's most popular public figures and had been considered the front-runner for the 2016 race to become the state's next governor, according to the Post, but in August 2013 he was admitted to one of the world's most renowned cancer-treatment centers, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, to begin treatment for the disease.
He is survived by his wife, Hallie, and two children.
Read more at the Washington Post.