Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a serious illness with dramatically increasing incidence. Tremendous worldwide efforts have been exerted to find better ways to treat the disease, delay its onset and prevent it from progressing. In order to discover future anti-AD medicines more rationally, it is crucial to understand the evolving process of existing related technologies from the perspective of technology flow. 

Areas covered: Patent citation has been used broadly as a powerful tool to capture technology flows. This study collects patent data from IMS Health databases on anti-AD drugs, both marketed and in the research and development (R&D) pipeline. In all, 329 US patents from 1978 through 2013 and citationsbetween them are analyzed, in addition to patents related to marketed drugs. 

Expert opinion: To discover effective agents for AD treatment, one promising strategy is to integrate various technology clusters related to anti-AD drugs in terms of the extremely dispersed patent citation network in this area. In this context, governments should pay more attention to encourage basic research, especially to focus on cross-mechanism anti-AD agents. New theories and targets for AD, such as the tau protein hypothesis, are worthy of researcher note. Drugs targeting beta-amyloid peptide theory show promise for investors.