You've got it, except the tokenize line was just to fill $1- with that text for testing and you need to separate the identifier because it won't be evaluated if it's touching other text.

Code:
var %word = $ini($scriptdirKC-ScriptPackv2-Highlights.ini,%numberofhighlights)
var %regex = $+(/\b,%word,\b/iS)
if ($regex($1-,%regex)) {
  echo -ag match
}