From Academic Vision to Global Pharma Acquisition
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About
Chematica's journey is a fascinating one - from its inception as academic software to its acquisition by Merck, one of the world's pharmaceutical giants. Here's a deep dive into our role, the challenges we faced, and how we transformed an academic vision into a market-ready product that caught Merck's attention. Read more
CASE STUDY DETAILS
Chematica
Seed to Series A Startup
Warsaw, Poland
Project work
6 - 10 people
2 - 4 years
€250 - 1M
Agile
FOCUS AREA
Challenge, approach, and impact
User Experience (UX) required a significant upgrade
Moving away from merely replicating the desktop app’s functionalities, we collaborated closely with the client, striving to craft features that met users' contemporary needs.
Code's instability
We then identified the project's core issue: its instability, mainly because it was developed by chemists rather than programmers. Though functional, Chematica wasn’t ready for mass commercial usage. This necessitated us to streamline its backend, which was originally a potpourri of Java, C++, Python, and CoffeeScript.
Lack of documentation
Shifting from a chemical desktop app to a modern web application was no easy task. One of our initial hurdles was the computational chemical backend – a vital element of Chematica that had little to no API documentation.
During the due diligence time, Kamil, our CTO, took upon himself the task of reverse-engineering and documenting the API. It took him over two weeks of careful study to get to know the code well, and the work accelerated from there.
Security & IP protection
Security was paramount. Given the significance of IP protection in the pharmaceutical sphere, we invested heavily in ensuring the code was production-ready, secure, and scalable.
Some of our key security measures included:
Whitelist identifying,
Multi-factor authorization,
Enforcing continuous security baseline compliance,
Asymmetric encryption algorithms,
Hashing algorithms.
In the following months after the acquisition, rigorous pen tests and thorough security scans were conducted by an external entity, where Chematica stood tall with no major issues.
Testimonials
“"We entered the project at a critical stage in its lifecycle, when the time finally came to turn it from a rough research prototype into a production-ready application that could withstand contact with actual users. It was severely lacking in scalability, UX and good development practices. What really mattered, though, was that it had solid scientific foundations and we could work with domain experts. We could handle the rest." “ Read more
Anonymous
co-founder, CTO
VERIFIED
“"We entered the project at a critical stage in its lifecycle, when the time finally came to turn it from a rough research prototype into a production-ready application that could withstand contact with actual users. It was severely lacking in scalability, UX and good development practices. What really mattered, though, was that it had solid scientific foundations and we could work with domain experts. We could handle the rest." “ Read more
Anonymous
co-founder, CTO
VERIFIED
“"We entered the project at a critical stage in its lifecycle, when the time finally came to turn it from a rough research prototype into a production-ready application that could withstand contact with actual users. It was severely lacking in scalability, UX and good development practices. What really mattered, though, was that it had solid scientific foundations and we could work with domain experts. We could handle the rest." “ Read more
Anonymous
co-founder, CTO
VERIFIED
“"We entered the project at a critical stage in its lifecycle, when the time finally came to turn it from a rough research prototype into a production-ready application that could withstand contact with actual users. It was severely lacking in scalability, UX and good development practices. What really mattered, though, was that it had solid scientific foundations and we could work with domain experts. We could handle the rest." “ Read more
Anonymous
co-founder, CTO
VERIFIED
“"We entered the project at a critical stage in its lifecycle, when the time finally came to turn it from a rough research prototype into a production-ready application that could withstand contact with actual users. It was severely lacking in scalability, UX and good development practices. What really mattered, though, was that it had solid scientific foundations and we could work with domain experts. We could handle the rest." “ Read more
Anonymous
co-founder, CTO
VERIFIED
“"We entered the project at a critical stage in its lifecycle, when the time finally came to turn it from a rough research prototype into a production-ready application that could withstand contact with actual users. It was severely lacking in scalability, UX and good development practices. What really mattered, though, was that it had solid scientific foundations and we could work with domain experts. We could handle the rest." “ Read more
Anonymous
co-founder, CTO
VERIFIED
Team Structure
Client Team
Daily point of contact
Product Owner
***** *****
The client stakeholders at Chematica were working closely with the team at Code Poets
Agency Team
Production
3 x Backend Developer
Production
2 x Frontend Engineer
Governance
1 x Project Manager