Evaluating the methylation status of CXCR4 promoter: A cost-effective and sensitive two-step PCR method.

The chemokine receptor CXCR4 plays a key role in the bone marrow microenvironment maintenance and in the hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells migration. In addition, CXCR4 is expressed in a broad spectrum of solid tumors where its methylation state has been recently proposed as a biomarker for cancer prognosis. To evaluate methylation status of CXCR4 promoter we developed a sensitive, accurate, specific and cost-effective two-step PCR method that does not require any specific equipment other than a conventional real-time PCR instrument.