The government has allocated loans of €250,000 to eight companies focusing on innovations such as vaccination plasters, anti-cancer spreading agents and heat-producing computers.

Junior education minister Sander Dekker has allocated the loans to start-ups with their roots in university research to help them develop their ideas commercially.

Other companies to have been granted the loans include a company which focuses on window sun shades which generate energy, live DNA images and 3D printing waste material.

A further 31 companies have been allowed loans of up to €40,000.

‘If you can translate innovative scientific knowledge into applications which benefit society then scientific knowledge has tremendous added value in terms of society and the economy,’ Dekker said in a statement.