OBJECTIVES: Bispecific antibodies (BsAbs) are thought to have a promising clinical application and many R&D companies include them in their R&D pipeline. We tried to analyze the technology flows pattern of BsAbs by patent citation network, then identified technological opportunities and risks of different drug targets for R&D companies.

METHODS: A patent citation network was utilized to analyze technology flows.Patents on BsAbs were gathered from the Cortellis platform's Drug Discovery Intelligence database (CDDI) and the PatSnap global patent database. Between 1996 and 2021, 220 patents and 355 internal citations were included and analyzed.

RESULTS: Bispecific antibody drugs are in the golden period of research and development. BsAbs with popular targets have advantages in higher R&D success rates, while drugs with non-popular targets mainly play an important role in technology convergence.

CONCLUSIONS: The examination of the technology flows reveals two important insights. First, as the technical reasons for the popularity of popular targets were likely to lie in the high success rates of their corresponding drugs, R&D companies should focus more on how to discover such targets before the competition gets tough. Second, it is important to consider the strategic role of non-popular target drug technologies and to use target portfolio characteristics to develop R&D strategies that balance risk and competition.