$re = '/(?:^|, )\d+(?=\s*[A-Z])/m';
$str = '1John Radcliffe Hospital/Oxford/United Kingdom, 11Ruhr-Universität
3/Bochum/Bochum/Germany, 3University of British Columbia/Vancouver/Canada, 4National
Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry/Tokyo/Japan,
5University of Catania/Catania/Italy, 6F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd/Basel/Switzerland, 7
University of Colorado School of Medicine/Aurora/United States of America';
$subst = "\g<0>=";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php