Why do breakthroughs in science and research that have enormous (and obvious) potential often not (or barely) go beyond the lab? Sometimes advances are made in science research that have enormous and very easily visible potential. There are two examples that I have seen recently. 

One example is this newly engineered inexpensive process to convert carbon dioxide into methanol, for fuel. As the article says, "Making methanol from carbon dioxide, the primary contributor to global warming, would both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a substitute for the fossil fuels that create them." This has huge potential, and it seems this should be of great excitement to researchers and activists alike working in this field. 

Another example is this development of four strategies that represent partial but significant progress into the fighting of general cancers. This also has lots of potential in its field, and clearly is more advanced than many methods used today. 

These two advances are by no means the only ones of such significance that I have seen, and there are surely much more that I have not seen, yet none of us see these go beyond this stage. 

Why do breakthroughs in science and research that have enormous (and obvious) potential often not (or barely) go beyond the lab, and what makes them different from those that do become applied in the real world?
They are just flashy press releases.  They're really not as cheap (including both capex and opex), easy, high yield, resistant to catalyst impurities, or scale-up able as written.

I've been seeing these flashy press releases on thin film fuel cells and the like (methanol production, energy production, F-T synthesis, biodiesel, switchgrass etc.) since at least the 90s.  The current press releases look amazingly similar to the same press releases from back then, with little evident improvement in the field.  Or realization of (or shame for) the past press releases that went nowhere.  Just a new assistant professor and another press hungry R1 school putting out more sizzle, sans steak.

And don't get me started on "nano".  That was already max hype in the 90s and has basically gone nowhere commercially (i.e. outside the realm of ivory tower careers).  And it still seems like a hot area for NSF funding and the like.  And it's a field that really attracts the ego scientists and self-promoters.