A convenient general approach towards 1,4-disubstituted αdiazo glutaconimides starting from β-substituted glutaconic acid anhydrides has been developed. It involves condensation with amines and subsequent diazo transfer reaction. This new class of diazocarbonyl heterocycles has been converted into a series of polysubstituted pyridine-2,6(1H,3H)-diones and oxazolo[5,4-b]pyridin-5(4H)-ones via a Rh 2 (esp) 2-catalyzed XH-insertion reaction and [3 + 2] cycloaddition with nitriles, respectively. Results and discussion Glutaconimides 5, precursors of the target diazo compounds 4, were obtained by analogy with the methods described in the literature [21] from synthetically available β-substituted glutaconic acid anhydrides 6. [18-19] Initial attempt at the Regitz diazo transfer using an equivalent amount of a base (DBU, TEA, DIPEA) resulted only in a negligible yield of 4. This was