The sex steroid hormone progesterone modulates the developmental and lactogenic activity of prolactin in the mammary gland. Regulation of the level of prolactin receptor (PRLR) provides one possible mechanism by which this may occur, prompting this investigation of the molecular mechanisms involved in progestin regulation of prolactin receptor levels. Treatment of T-47D and MCF-7 human breast cancer cells with 10 nM of the synthetic progestin ORG 2058 for 24 hr resulted in an increase in all four PRLR mRNA transcripts detected. The effect of ORG 2058 was shown in T-47D cells to be time- and concentration-dependent and resulted in an approximate two-fold increase in PRLR mRNA after 24 hr of treatment with 10 nM or 100 nM ORG 2058. Nuclear run-on assays indicated that ORG 2058 increased the rate of T-47D PRLR gene transcription at all times between 1 hr and 28 hr of treatment. The protein synthesis inhibitors cycloheximide and puromycin abrogated the induction of PRLR gene transcription at 1 hr and 2 hr, which demonstrated that on-going protein synthesis was required for the ORG 2058 effect and suggested that progestins may exert some transcriptional effects via the induction of an intermediary protein. These experiments demonstrated that progestin induced a transcriptionally based increase in PRLR gene expression and provided a mechanism by which progesterone may modulate the mitogenic activity of prolactin during mammary gland development.