var <- c("a1","a2","a3","a4")
s = "3*a1 + a1*a2 + 4*a3*a4 + a1*a3"
block = paste(var, collapse="|")
pat = paste0("\\b((?:", block, ")\\*)(?=\\b(?:", block, ")\\b)|\\*")
gsub(pat, "\\1", s, perl=T)
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