Zaimenko I, et al. - Whether plasma metabolites can serve as biomarkers for stratification of stage II colorectal cancer (CRC) patients according to metastasis risk, was investigated by retrospectively comparing the metabolic profiles of plasma samples prospectively obtained prior to metastasis formation from non-metastasized vs metachronously metastasized stage II CRC patients of the German population-based case-control multicenter DACHS study. Robust supervised classifications using decision trees and support vector machines were carried out and verified in order to detect the metabolites differentiating non-metastasized from metachronously metastasized stage II CRC patients. Findings showed that plasma metabolic profiles enabled to distinguish non-metastasized and metachronously metastasized stage II CRC patients. Also, based on their risk for metachronous metastasis, non-invasive stratification in stage II CRC patients was enabled by the classification models consisting of few metabolites.