A variety of diazepinone derivatives were prepared from α-amino acids and amino alcohols by a new synthetic methodology based on ring closing metathesis as a key step. The diazepinones were coupled with ribose derivatives to afford novel diazepinone nucleosides. Among them, (4R)-1-ribosyl-4-methyl-3,4-dihydro-1H-1,3-diazepin-2(7H)-one (3) showed a potent inhibitory effect (K(i) = 145.97 ± 4.87 nM) against human cytidine deaminase.