Luminescence-based screening for extracellular vesicle release modulators reveals a role for PI4KIIIβ in exosome biogenesis upon lysosome inhibition

Dysregulated extracellular vesicle (EV) release has been implicated in various pathologies, including cancer, neurodegenerative disease and osteoarthritis. Despite clear therapeutic potential, drug screening for EV release modulators has yielded limited success due to the lack of a sensitive and scalable EV read-out system. Here, we employed CRISPR-Cas9 to engineer HEK293 cells expressing HA-NanoLuciferase-(NL)-tagged endogenous CD63. We found that under basal culture conditions, CD63-containing EVs are released via a mechanism that is independent of the exocytic SNARE protein SNAP23, presumably by direct budding from the plasma membrane. Endo-lysosome inhibition by chemical or genetic perturbation of vATPase strongly increased SNAP23 and nSmase2-dependent exosome secretion from intracellular compartments. Proteomic analysis revealed these exosomes are enriched for early- and late endosomal markers, but also for autophagosomal proteins. This suggests that a proportion of these exosomes originate from amphisomes, although chemical inhibition of canonical autophagy did not affect exosome secretion upon lysosome inhibition. Using a broad- spectrum kinase inhibitor screen, we identified and subsequently validated the lipid kinase PI4KIII{beta} as a critical mediator of exosome secretion and amphisome-mediated secretory autophagy, upon lysosome inhibition. We conclude that tagging of endogenous CD63 with NanoLuciferase represents a sensitive, scalable reporter strategy that enables identification of (druggable) modulators of EV biogenesis and release under physiological and pathological conditions.