About
A cardiologist who runs hospitals, runs a lab, and writes for the rest of us.
Marschall Runge has spent forty years inside American medicine — first as a cardiologist treating patients, then as a molecular biologist running a research lab, then as the dean and CEO who ran one of the country's largest academic health systems. He writes books because most of what he wants to say doesn't fit in a journal article.
The work, in one paragraph
Dr. Runge's research established that oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction sit upstream of cardiovascular aging — that the slow accumulation of damage we call "getting older" is, at the cellular level, a controllable process. His earlier work on NADPH oxidase (NOX4) and on Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) connected vascular biology to fibrosis and hypertension. His current work, with collaborators at Michigan, links epigenetic aging clocks to cardiorespiratory fitness, mitochondrial inheritance, and chronic inflammation in one cohort. The thesis: aging is a process you can negotiate with.
Training
PhD in cardiovascular molecular biology at Vanderbilt University. MD and internal-medicine residency at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Cardiology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Leadership
Executive vice president for medical affairs at the University of Michigan, dean of the medical school, and CEO of Michigan Medicine. Led the system through a decade of expansion in digital health, precision medicine, and aging research.
Writing
Author of The Great Healthcare Disruption (Forbes Books, 2025) — a USA TODAY Best-Seller and Global Book Awards Gold Medal winner — and the techno-medical thriller Coded to Kill (Post Hill Press, 2023). A third nonfiction book on epigenetic clocks and biological aging is in development with Forbes Books and agent Thomas LeBien.
Public-facing work
Writes and speaks for general readers on the same biology that drives the lab. Forthcoming: The Longevity Switch Substack and a Michigan MOOC on epigenetics and aging through the University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation.
Where I Speak, Write, and Advise
Five subjects Dr. Runge speaks and writes on, each rooted in clinical or laboratory work and feeding into forthcoming projects: the Longevity Switch Substack, a Michigan MOOC on epigenetics and aging, and a third nonfiction book with Forbes Books.
Longevity & Healthy Aging
Mitochondrial dysfunction, epigenetic clocks, and the parts of healthspan you can actually move. Lead investigator on a multi-omic Michigan initiative linking cardiorespiratory fitness, methylation arrays, and maternal mtDNA inheritance.
"Aging is now understood as a complex biological process with multiple interconnected mechanisms. Under the new paradigm, what's been done might be undone."
Obesity Medication & GLP‑1s
What a generation of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs is changing in primary care, endocrinology, and cardiometabolic risk, and what patients should and shouldn't expect from them.
AI in Medicine
Where AI is actually changing care delivery (diagnostic decision support, ambient documentation, algorithmic triage), where the hype runs ahead of the evidence, and what to ask before trusting any of it.
The Future of American Healthcare
Big Tech in care delivery, retail medicine, the restructuring of payers, and the policy choices that will decide who benefits. The thesis of The Great Healthcare Disruption.
Who to Trust With Your Health
Separating credible expertise from the influencer industrial complex. How to evaluate longevity claims and find guidance you can actually use, in an era saturated with biological reductionism dressed up as science.