On the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's famous moonshot speech, President Joe Biden on Monday is set out to lay out his new plan for a new "American Moonshot," an effort aimed at eradicating cancer "as we know it."

"This is a, all the way back '62, the moonshot was announced, we're gonna have a moonshot for cancer, for real. We're gonna cure cancer over time. I'm gonna lay out how we're gonna do that," Biden said Monday morning as he departed Washington for Boston, Massachusetts.

President Biden on Monday will appoint Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, an experienced biotechnology professional, to lead an agency created in March to “push the limits” of medical health research and innovation.

Mr. Biden will detail Dr. Wegrzyn’s role as the inaugural director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, in a speech about his cancer moonshot initiative from Boston. The agency’s portfolio and budget will be focused in part on building programs and technologies that detect, prevent and treat diseases like cancer.

President Joe Biden on Monday appointed longtime biologist and former government scientist Renee Wegrzyn as the first director of the nascent Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

Biden’s announcement comes as ARPA-H advocates debate where the multibillion-dollar agency should be headquartered and which elusive disease areas should be prioritized. The president officially launched the agency in March with $1 billion in initial funding allotted by Congress, but the search for its inaugural director has taken months.