I am considering flow cytometry and PCR. Are these methods not gold standard for surface receptor quantification?
I have been suggest to perform western blot.
Depends on how accurate you want this quantitation to be. I would go with Flow cytometry over western blot and PCR. Western blot is semiquantitative at its best and I am not sure PCR is the way to go. Flow would give you a MFI value which is relative to the level of receptor expression (at the population level). If you want to enumerate receptors at the single cell level, you may need to use more complex microscopy methods.
Julie Joseph covers most of the bases I will add one thing. A sub-population of a receptor may be sequestered inside the cell and not on the membrane, some methods will detect these others will not(ie total protein western will but cell surface flow might not). You may or may not mater if you count these receptors depending on your goals.
In the end, your choice of method will be determined by its ability to demonstrate what you are trying to prove with your experiment rather than what is considered the gold standard.
I would do flow cytometry. It is faster and you do not have to purify Tregs, just acquire enough cells so you can have proper staining and therefore proper quantification.
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