Dr. Figueroa was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She received her MD from Universidad del Salvador, School of Medicine in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1997. She trained as a hematologist at the Institute for Hematological Research “Mariano Castex” from the National Academy of Medicine in Buenos Aires, where she later joined the Malignant Hematology Department. In 2004 Dr. Figueroa joined Dr. Ari Melnick’s laboratory in New York as postdoctoral fellow. There she focused on the characterization of epigenetic deregulation in myeloid malignancies.

In 2011 Dr. Figueroa moved to the University of Michigan Medical School as an Assistant Professor and continued her work in the field of epigenetic regulation of normal and malignant hematopoiesis. In 2016 she was recruited as Associate Professor to the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Dept. of Human Genetics. She also serves as the Co-Leader of the Cancer Epigenetics Research Program and Assistant Director for Translational Research for the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Figueroa has been the recipient of scholar awards from the SASS Foundation for Cancer Research, the American Society of Hematology, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

The Figueroa lab studies the role of epigenetic modifications in transcriptional regulation during normal and malignant hematopoiesis, focusing on how changes in normal chromatin patterns occur during malignant transformation and how these changes contribute to leukemogenesis and disease phenotype. They use a combination of genome-wide next generation sequencing approaches as well as in vitro and in vivo modeling to determine the consequences of the epigenetic abnormalities that they identify. In addition, the lab seeks to harness the power of epigenomics for the development of molecular biomarkers predictive of therapeutic response and clinical outcome.