Optimism grew this weekend that more good news is on the way from the clinical trials of the highly publicized obesity drug Acomplia (rimonabant).

While researchers are not scheduled to present new data from the RIO-Europe clinical trial at the American College of Cardiology scientific meeting in Orlando until Tuesday, March 8th, Sanofi Aventis has scheduled a "Medical Education Seminar" for Monday evening March 7th that seems to herald more encouraging results.

The Monday evening session is titled "Intra-Abdominal Adiposity and Cardiovascular Disease: A Novel Approach to Managing Multiple CV Risk Factors" and it will be chaired by Dr. Louis Aronne, president of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity.

Aronne, a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, previously has expressed the belief that Acomplia "could be a paradigm-shifting drug."

The session Monday night is expected to focus on the role of Acomplia in reducing the abdominal fat that accumulates around the waist, which is widely viewed as a key indicator of cardiovascular risk.

Two-year results from the RIO-North America trial last November showed that waist circumference of trial participants was reduced by 3.1 inches for patients taking a daily 20 mg dose of rimonabant compared to 1.5 inches for trial participants taking a placebo.

Other researchers taking place in Monday night's news conference include Dr. Luc Van Gaal, professor of Diabetology, Metabolism and Clinical Nutrition at Belgium's University Hospital Antwerp, who has been the principal researcher on the RIO-Europe clinical trial.

He will be joined by Dr. Arya M Sharma, professor at the Michael DeGroote School of Medicine in Ontario; Dr. Valentin Fuster, Director of the Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and Kravis Center for Cardiovascular Disease; and Dr. Richard Gorlin, Professor of Cardiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.