Abstract Purpose To investigate body composition as a predictive biomarker of cancer-related death in patients with non-metastatic colon cancer (CRC). Materials and methods Patients with CRC (stages II–III) treated with upfront surgery, with availability of baseline CT, clinico-histological and survival data were retrospectively enrolled. Patients with stage IV or CT unavailability were excluded. Body composition parameters derived from baseline abdominal CT using AI-based automatic segmentation