All Samantha Kuehn had on her mind when she wore her new t-shirt to school -- with the slogan save the ta-tas plastered across the front -- was her mom, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last month and just received a mastectomy two weeks ago.

But officials at Oklahoma Union High School in Nowata County are not happy about the senior student's decision to wear such a shirt to school. The moment they saw it, in fact, they sent her home. And they told her not to return until she changed the shirt.

Kuehn and her mom, Michelle Bishop, are stunned that the shirt caused such an uproar.

"I was so surprised that my shirt would cause so much trouble," said Samantha. "Other girls wear low cut shirts or belly shirts and the boys wear shirts with put downs on them and no one bothers them. My shirt isn't really vulgar or offensive at all, and it means something to me. The principal told me 'It could be taken the wrong way'."

Principal Steven Barth believes he made the right call.

"If you check the Web site, the clothing sold there is suggestive," explained Barth. "I feel for the condition of her mother, but the shirt was inappropriate to wear to school."

Kuehn and her mom plan to take the matter to a Board of Education meeting on April 11. And you can bet Kuehn will be wearing her shirt.

Visit savethetatas.com for more information on this breast cancer initiative. Sales of all clothing items -- pick your size, slogan and color -- benefit the fight against the disease.

Women with early stage breast cancer now have a new tool at their disposal. The tool -- called MammaPrint -- is newly approved by the FDA and while it is not yet a perfect measure, it can be used along with other information to estimate whether breast cancer is likely to return in five or 10 years.

The value of this test, that measures through computer analysis the activity of 70 genes using a sample of tissue removed from a breast tumor, is that doctors and patients can better determine course of treatments.

MammoPrint offers two results -- high risk and low risk -- and accurately picked in studies which women were at low risk at least 90 percent of the time. However, for women who were told they were at high risk for recurrence as a result of the test, just 23 percent experienced a relapse.

"You can't go all the way to the bank with this test," says FDA official Dr. Steven Gutman who argues the test is still better than having no information at all.

Agendia, the Dutch maker of MammoPrint, is exploring ways to make this one-of-a-kind product available in the United States. It has been used in the Netherlands since 2005.

"This test has enormous implications for the short-term future of cancer research in general, and is one of the truly great breakthroughs of our time," says Cancer Blog reader Gregory Pawelski with whom I am grateful for sharing this story tip with me.

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute announced Thursday that two cancer patients with rapidly growing melanoma were successfully treated with gene therapy. The patients -- both men -- were given immune system cells from their own blood that were engineered to attack their tumors. This took place 18 months ago -- and they are still surviving with no evidence of cancer. This success comes after a three-decade effort by surgeon Steven Rosenberg to find ways to use the immune system to fight cancer. This approach is not always successful, however, and 15 other patients who got this same treatment did not survive. Still, Rosenberg believes this small-scale success is proof that the principle of gene therapy can work. And others agree -- calling his work an important landmark, even though the response rate of two out of 17 is not ideal.

Rosenberg does not claim the two surviving patients are cured. If they survive for five years, he might classify them as possibly cured -- but even after five years, cancer can come back. He does consider this a huge breakthrough for these two men who are still alive and well. And he says he has every expectation that he can get the process to work even better in the future.