Whereas benign primary prostate epithelial cells (PrEC) and immortalized prostate epithelial cells (RWPE-1) showed no methylation, all prostate cancer cell lines (including LNCaP, LNCaP-abl, C4-2B, LAPC4, VCaP, DU145, PC3, and CWR22rv1) showed evidence of dense CpG methylation around the first exon of CD38 (Additional file 1). Here, CD38 is linked to prostate carcinoma.