$re = '/^\'(.*?)\'.*/m';
$str = '\'contentX\' is not one of [\'Illumina NovaSeq 6000\', \'Other\', \'Ion Torrent PGM\', \'Illumina HiSeq X Ten\', \'Illumina HiSeq 4000\', \'Illumina NextSeq\', \'Complete Genomics\', \'Illumina Genome Analyzer II\']';
$subst = "$1";
$result = preg_replace($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